Employers and employees need to protect the businesses and jobs in California by strongly opposing two (2) Assembly Bills: AB 67 and AB 357.
AB 67 provides that California employers shall compensate an employee at no less than twice the employees regular rate of pay on a “family holiday”, defined as December 25 and the fourth Thursday of November of each year. It sounds okay on its face, but has serious consequences for California businesses and jobs. Those consequences include the increase in costs for those businesses which cannot close due to the nature of the business; since the bill does not apply to online businesses and out-of-state businesses, it places a serious disadvantage to business in California which are “brick and mortar” businesses by increasing costs and encouraging moving to online services or to another state will result in additional loss of California jobs. These are just a few of the serious consequences attendant to this bill.
AB 357 according to the California Chamber is a “Job Killer” for employees and an administrative and cost “Business Killer”. This bill applies to any type of retail sales activity in the state. The main provision is that employers must provide 2 weeks advance notice of the working schedule for employees while increasing categories of protected leave; thereby placing a employer between a rock and a hard place. For example, someone calls in to say they cannot come to work that day due to a sick child, then to fill that position for the day, the employer has to replace that employee who has a valid reason for not being there with another employee who will not have received at least 2 weeks advance notice of the schedule for that day. The employer then has to pay the replacement employee additional pay, which is not defined. The employer either complies with the mandatory protected leave and pays additional pay, or does not comply with the mandatory protected leave and does not pay additional pay but gets sued for the non-compliance with the leave. There are many other implications to this bill.
What can you do? AB 67 was passed by the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee on March 19, 2015 and AB 357 is being amended to limit the size of the business to which it will be applicable, but the amendment does not correct the fundamental problems of this bill. You can call, write, email, or fax you opposition to these bills to your Assembly representative. To obtain the name and contact information for your Assembly representative visit the California State Legislature’s website or the California State Assembly’s website.