Parental values and reliance on labor unions is what has driven Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign off on Senate Bill 1383, which they call a nail in the coffin for small businesses, according to a pro-business advocate.
“This Legislature and governor have given the keys to the castle to labor and lawyers and left main street out in the cold,” said John Kabateck, California state director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Gov. Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are parents of four children and prior to entering the political realm, he owned PlumpJack Cafe and PlumpJack Winery.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
| Stock photo
“It would be nice, as much as the governor is hearkening to his parental values, if he would occasionally look back on his small business roots and apply his understanding of the economics on Main Street, which he and the legislature have not done here at all,” Kabateck told the Southern California Record.
The law now allows an employee to:
Take up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave during a 12-month period for specified family care and medical leave reasons. “This is a final nail in the coffin for small businesses who are now also facing onerous, continued no-pause button on minimum wage increases, onerous privacy regulations that they must now comply with, onerous workers' comp requirements and very little openness or willingness to help with the new independent contractor law,” Kabateck said in an interview.
Reinstatement to the same or comparable position after a 12-month leave. “Every small business is having to bob and weave as it were to keep themselves alive during this pandemic and nobody knows how their business model is going to look in three to six months, let alone a year, so to be required to guarantee a position to an employee if that company has to scale back if they have to relocate, shift certain hours or shift their business model is ridiculous," Kabateck said.
Continued group health coverage during the duration of the 12-month leave. “The federal unemployment insurance program has created a perverse incentive for many workers who are no longer on the payroll who have no interest in coming back,” Kabateck said. “Small business employers are having difficulty bringing employees back because they are receiving gobs of money from the federal government for unemployment. Our leaders are making it next to impossible for owners to sustain employees who are dedicated and consistent in the workplace when they need them the most, which is right now.”
SB 1383 also lowers the compliance threshold to five-or-more employee firms.
“We didn't like the bill but we felt that given the likelihood it was going to pass, we at least had been strongly strenuously urging for a threshold of 20 to 25 or more employees but they wouldn't even give us half of that,” Kabateck said. “It's ridiculous. At what point is enough is enough? We are just up in arms.
"Our leaders should be ashamed of themselves for not only having no clue about economics but also caving into putting the interests of unions and lawyers above our number one job creators.”