It’s a battle that plays out in Sacramento nearly every year, sometimes over the same issues for decades running. The specific bills change, but the basic tension does not: advocacy groups pushing new rules they say protect workers, shoppers or the environment, and business leaders warning that those same rules will drive up costs and chase companies out of the state.

With the two-year legislative session winding down, several bills born out of this rivalry remain in play, and both sides are working hard to shape how they turn out.

One closely watched measure is Assembly Bill 2564, introduced by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, a San Diego Democrat, at the request of labor unions, consumer organizations and groups representing low-income Californians. The bill would ban a practice known as “surveillance pricing,” in which retailers use shoppers’ personal data to set individualized prices through algorithms.

Supporters argue the practice can lead to unfair or discriminatory pricing and should be curbed. Retailers counter that the bill’s language is broad enough to wipe out common discount programs, including coupons and loyalty rewards, ultimately making everyday purchases more expensive in a state already known for its high cost of living.

A bigger fight, at least in terms of its potential impact on California’s business climate, centers on Assembly Bill 1776, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat. The bill would expand the reach of California’s century-old Cartwright Act, the state’s primary antitrust law, which has allowed legal action against companies that collude to squeeze out competitors and inflate prices since 1907.

AB 1776 would go further, permitting legal action against companies that achieve market dominance even without engaging in collusion. The idea grew out of a recommendation from the California Law Revision Commission, which argued the original law never anticipated the kind of market concentration seen in today’s economy. The bill has drawn support from a broad coalition of consumer groups and labor organizations.

Business advocates, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, see it differently. They argue the bill would expose companies to lawsuits simply for succeeding in the marketplace through legitimate competition, rather than through any wrongdoing.

An earlier version of the bill would have let private attorneys file lawsuits under the law on their own initiative — a provision critics considered especially dangerous because of the potential flood of litigation it could unleash. That language was stripped out after the bill cleared the Assembly on a narrow vote and headed to the Senate, meaning enforcement would now fall to the state attorney general or local prosecutors rather than private lawyers.

Even with that change, the Chamber remains firmly opposed. In a statement, spokesperson John Myers said the bill’s backers have yet to identify any concrete examples of the market behavior they’re trying to stop.

“The author and sponsors of AB 1776 have never brought forward specific, real-world examples of the behavior they are seeking to change,” Myers said. “That’s why we’ve often seen this as a ‘solution in search of a problem,’ the kind of fundamental flaw that makes legislative negotiations extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

Regardless of how these bills — and several others caught in the same crossfire — fare before the August 31 deadline, the underlying struggle between business interests and their perennial opponents is far from finished. Lawmakers will pick it back up when they return to Sacramento in December, joined by a handful of new legislators and, come January, a newly inaugurated governor.

Original source: CalMatters

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If Newsom signs Senate Bill 399, California would join nine other states that have recently passed laws prohibiting an employer from requiring workers to attend so-called captive audience meetings about their political or religious views. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed one such law last year, and has touted it on the campaign trail. 

The California bill can cover discussions of employers’ views on political candidates or legislation, but it’s largely aimed at one specific kind of required workplace meeting — when bosses discuss whether workers should unionize. 

California workers, following a nationwide trend, have increasingly sought unionization in recent years. Union elections have spiked in the last three years, with nearly 17,000 workers voting at more than 300 California workplaces in 2023. So far in 2024, more than 14,000 California workers have voted in a union election, according to a CalMatters analysis of National Labor Relations Board data.

The National Labor Relations Board has generally allowed “captive audience” meetings for decades — provided employers don’t threaten workers or withhold benefits for supporting a union. But the board’s general counsel under President Joe Biden has sought to crack down on them, arguing they are often used to intimidate employees.

Business groups say the bill would be much broader, and would infringe on employers’ free speech rights. State bans in Connecticut and Minnesota have been challenged in court. Wisconsin in 2009 was one of the first states to ban such meetings; when employers filed suit the following year, arguing it conflicted with federal law, the state backed down and agreed not to enforce it. 

The California Chamber of Commerce made SB 399 one of their most fiercely contested bills this year. In a legislative alert on Tuesday, the chamber said the bill would “effectively chill any discussions related to legislation, regulations, or other ‘political matters.’” 

In an August letter to lawmakers opposing the bill, business groups argued they already can’t coerce workers to vote for certain candidates or to vote against unionizing, and said because the bill could fine bosses for talking to employees about political views but not other matters, it’s a violation of the First Amendment. 

The bill includes exemptions for “political organizations” that employ people whose job duties require them to engage in political activity, but chamber policy advocate Ashley Hoffman said in the letter that it’s too vague. 

But supporters say the bill only targets intimidation in the workplace by penalizing employers who punish workers for refusing to attend a “captive audience” meeting. 

“If an employer wants to share [their] beliefs at the worksite, that’s fine, but no one should be coerced to listen,” Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, a San Bernardino Democrat, said on the Assembly floor Friday before voting for the bill.  

The bill’s passage last week was a win for unions amid a number of losses this year in the Legislature, especially compared to the 2023 session. 

And while the state in the past two years has increased wages for fast food workers and health care workers, and boosted worker benefits such as paid sick days, labor-backed demands to make it easier to unionize or go on strike have been a tougher sell. 

“If we just keep doing legislation that makes things better for workers, that’s good, but it’s not the same power that you’re giving workers in the workplace when they’re able to strike, when they’re able to organize without intimidation,” Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation, told CalMatters this week.

In 2022, Newsom was reluctant to sign a bill making it easier for farmworkers to form unions by giving them an option to signal their support without employers knowing who was voting. He only gave his approval after the United Farm Workers drummed up political pressure from fellow Democrats, including Biden. That law has now been challenged by growers in court. 

Last year, he vetoed a bill to allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, a proposal that Hollywood writers and actors said would have helped them through the “hot labor summer” of work stoppages. Unions attempted to revive the bill this year, and it passed the Senate but failed to get enough votes to clear an Assembly committee. 

The captive audience meetings bill also passed the Senate last year, and then eked out of the Assembly last week with just over the minimum 41 votes needed to pass (though a handful of Democrats added “yes” votes later). It won final approval in the Senate Saturday on a 31-9 vote. 

The chamber is urging Newsom to veto the bill. The governor has not taken a position, and has until the end of September to decide.  

Two other bills sent to Newsom last week seek to help laborers cut out of traditional worker protections. He has rejected versions of both before.

Newsom in 2022 vetoed an expansion of unemployment insurance to undocumented immigrants, saying that the bill didn’t identify how to pay for it. The unemployment bill passed this year would require the administration to figure that out, and then report the plan back to the Legislature. 

In the past three years, Newsom has twice vetoed an expansion of workplace safety regulations to include domestic workers, such as house cleaners, nannies and caretakers, citing concerns about subjecting thousands of private homes to possible workplace safety inspections. The bill passed this year exempts workers who are privately employed by a homeowner or who are sent to private homes by publicly funded programs — such as county programs that pay caretakers for the elderly and disabled. 

Instead, the bill that passed this year puts the onus on house cleaning and home care agencies to ensure their employees are safe.

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