For the legislative and political week August 10-14
Welcome to the August 10 issue of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your small-business-advocacy team in Sacramento.
The Immediate Lobbying Work Ahead
- Senate Bill 1383 would expand the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to allow employees to use unpaid job-protected leave to care for a domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or parent-in-law who has a serious health condition. NFIB goals: raise the employee threshold in the bill and remove its private right of action.
- Assembly Bill 3216 seeks to expand leave and job protections for employees during a state of emergency, including leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), paid sick leave, and rehire rights for workers. Writes NFIB California’s chief legislative advocate, Kevin Pedrotti, “While maybe not applicable to NFIB membership as a whole, the bill does set a bad precedent and NFIB remains part of the opposition coalition. Despite its lofty promises about ‘protecting workers,’ AB 3216 is part of a longstanding effort by organized labor to enact legislation to protect incumbent unions.”
- Assembly Bill 685, among other things, would require employers to take six actions within 24 hours of knowing, “or reasonably should have known,” an employee was exposed to COVID-19. NFIB will remind lawmakers that many businesses and their owners are themselves casualties of this economic shutdown. The solution is not to saddle them with a new and unworkable mandate that will slow their recovery and re-opening, and subject them to extensive new civil and PAGA liability at the worst possible moment.
Discussions Continue
- NFIB California State Director John Kabateck and Kevin Pedrotti, NFIB’s chief legislative advocate, continued their discussion with Che Salina, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief deputy legislative affairs secretary, and other top administration officials, about business-reopening plans. NFIB is a member of the Governor’s Economic Recovery Task Force.
- Also last week, Kabateck had a meeting with Isabel Guzman, the governor’s small business advocate.
Look for It
- NFIB California will shortly be polling the membership on their recommendations for the November ballot initiatives.
Three Polls in Rapid Succession
- Tomorrow, August 11, NFIB will release its monthly Small Business Economic Trends report (the Optimism Index)
- Wednesday (scheduled), NFIB will unveil its quadrennial Small Business Problems and Priorities study, ranking the 75 issues of importance to Main Street. IMPORTANT—most of the research for the once-every-four-years’ study was collected pre-COVID-19, so the Research Center decided not to include it in order to show how issues have risen or fallen in importance compared to other reports. There will be a California-specific component in the new study.
- Last Thursday, NFIB issued its monthly Jobs Report showing more than half of small-business owners trying to hire. The Jobs Report is a component of the Optimism Index.
The Week in Media
- NFIB California thanked members Denise Duncan and Lorraine Salazar for helping reporters with the information they were seeking for stories in The Epoch Times and in CalMatters. Duncan commented on California’s highest-in-the-nation rate of permanent business closures. Salazar discussed having to layoff 120 of her 170 employees.
- State Director John Kabateck’s slamming of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision not to suspend a scheduled increase in the state’s minimum wage rage was widely reported, including in this story in the Southern California Record.
Nationally
- On August 8, the Paycheck Protection Program loan application closed.
- This Wednesday’s webinar, August 12, is titled, “Preparing for PPP Loan Forgiveness and PPP Q&A.” Register here.
- NFIB Virtual Fly-In is around the corner, and we have attendees from all 50 states. FGR will be scheduling “Hill Day” meetings for each state throughout the week of Tuesday, August 18th – Friday, August 21st between the times of 8:30 am – 8:30 pm EST. The Fly-In website is NFIBFlyIn.com. Register here.
NFIB California Main Street Minutes are published every Monday on the NFIB California webpage. Two additional updates are published the first and third Thursday of each month for inclusion in the bi-monthly newsletters to the membership. Next California Main Street Minute is August 17.
