Labor relations legislation of significance signed into law included SB 186 (De Saulnier) removing the sunset date on the law that authorizes a worker to predesignate his/her personal treating physician as the treating physician in the event of a workplace injury; SB 313 (De Saulnier) increasing the per-employee penalty for the lack of workers’ compensation coverage from $1,000 to $1,500 and requiring the Director of the Department of Industrial Relations to issue a penalty assessment order, as specified; SB 478 (Wolk) allowing the owner of an agricultural facility to designate a competent non-certified employee to perform routine maintenance of manlifts at agricultural facilities; SB 599 (Negrete McLeod), for purposes of disbursing economic recovery funds recently made available as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to workforce development programs, authorizing local workforce investment boards to work directly with institutions of higher education and other training providers approved by state or federal agencies, including private postsecondary institutions that participate in certain federal student financial aid programs, to quickly design education and training to fit the needs of the job seekers and employers they are serving; SB 9XX (Padilla) providing for an alternative method of funding the monitoring and enforcement of prevailing wage requirements, and providing for an exemption of prevailing wage requirements in the circumstances where a charter city is performing specified subsequent work on a water, sewer or storm drain system or similar system previously extended into a disadvantaged community in an unincorporated area; AB 236 (Swanson) extending the repeal date on the regulations of the employment practices of car washes, and defining the term “employer”; AB 271 (Solorio) conforming the California YouthBuild Program to the federal YouthBuild Transfer Act in order to avoid future problems with compliance and grant eligibility; AB 287 (Beall) requiring the state Council on Developmental Disabilities to form a standing Employment First Committee; AB 361 (Lowenthal) prohibiting an employer from refusing to pay for workers’ compensation medical treatment services if the employer had approved those services prior to treatment; AB 381 (Block) allowing community college districts to elect to provide state disability insurance coverage to academic employees who are permanent, part-time, or temporary, and to management, confidential, and employees who are not part of a bargaining unit; AB 395 (Fuentes) authorizing an awarding body to assist the Director of the Department of industrial Relations in the enforcement of prevailing wage laws that apply to apprenticeships, through the operation of the awarding body’s approved labor compliance program; AB 483 (Bachman) requiring the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau to establish an Internet Web site that identifies whether an employer is insured for workers’ compensation; AB 854 (Arambula) requiring an applicant for licensure as a farm labor contractor, for registration as a garment manufacturer, for renewal or reinstatement of the licenser or registration, and for a change in key personnel to submit a statement as to whether he/she has satisfied all requirements involving unpaid wages in a final court order judgment, a final order issued by the Labor Commissioner, or an accord; AB 1093 (Yamada) requiring that, for purposes of determining whether to grant or deny a workers’ compensation claim, if an employee is injured or killed by a third party in the course of the employee’s employment, no personal relationship or personal connection shall be deemed to exist if the third-party injured or killed the employee solely because of the employee’s sex, race, color, religious, creed, age, gender, disability, national origin, or sexual orientation; AB 5XX (Gaines) providing flexibility for employers and employees on work schedule requirements; AB 23XXX (Coto) establishing eligibility for an additional 20 weeks of federally-funded extended unemployment insurance benefits; and AB 29XXX (Coto) creating a new “alternative base period” that allows workers with more recent earnings who become unemployed to qualify for unemployment insurance if they meet other existing criteria, and establishing procedures for the Employment Development Department to collect the information necessary for the computation of a claimant’s alternative base period.
Vetoed labor legislation included SB 45 (Padilla) which would have increased the penalty on contractors that willfully violate prevailing wage law, and thereby permanently removes such contractors from competition with law-abiding contractors; SB 410 (Ducheny) which would have provided greater oversight over the spending of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, as well as to set clear legislative goals and priorities for the use of those funds relative to workforce readiness programs; AB 3 (V. Manuel Perez) which would have required the establishment of the Renewable Energy Workforce Readiness Initiative; AB 335 (Fuentes) which would have established a rebuttable presumption related to specified choice of law clauses or forum-selection clauses in binding employment materials; AB 402 (Davis) which would have required applicants for an Entertainment Work Permit for minors to pay a $50 fee; AB 527 (Fuentes) which would have extended provisions of law applicable to falsification of payroll records for wage claims in the garment manufacturing industry to claims by any worker in any industry; AB 793 (Jones) which would have clarified the meaning and effect of state employment compensation laws with respect to statutes of limitations; AB 838 (Swanson) which would have required the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to adopt a standard for controlling the risk of occurrence of heat illness where employees work indoors by July 1, 2011; AB 943 (Mendoza) which would prohibited the use of consumer credit reports for employment purposes, except as specified; AB 1288 (Fong) which would have enacted provisions of law related to the use by employers of specified electronic employment verification systems; AB 1394 (Bass) which would have made changes to provisions governing the Green Collar Jobs Council that places additional requirements on the Council, and created a mechanism for the receipt of funds from specified state and federal resources; AB 1559 (Assembly Labor and Employment Committee) which would have required the California Workforce Investment Board, in collaboration with local workforce investment boards, to establish the California Youth at Work Program, for the purposes of providing summer job training and work experience opportunities for youth in the state; AB 1561 (Assembly Labor and Employment Committee) which would have required the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to collaborate with the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board to prepare an annual report summarizing the outcomes of citations to employers, as specified; AB 1562 (Assembly Labor and Employment Committee) which would have prohibited an employer from discharging an employee because their wages have been subjected to garnishment for the payment of five or fewer judgments at any one time; AB 1563 (Assembly Labor and Employment Committee) which would have codified an enforcement protocol for a provision of existing law dealing with financially-insufficient contracts for labor or services; and AB 1567 (Assembly Veterans Committee) which would have required the Employment Training Panel’s three-year plan to include employment training goals, objectives, and strategies that may be implemented supporting targeted populations in need of training, including military veterans.