For the legislative and political week June 28-July 2
Welcome to the June 28-July 2 edition of the NFIB California Main Street Minute from your NFIB small-business advocacy team in Sacramento.
NFIB Virtual Fly-In a Huge Success
- House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena talked with NFIB California members on exclusive conference calls this past week as part of NFIB’s annual 2021 Fly-In, our annual national small business policy event.
- Click here for a recap of the issues NFIB is tracking in Congress.
- A final note on the Fly-In, from Caitlin Lanzara, NFIB’s legislative program manager.
- NFIB scheduled 38 meetings in 35 states with key lawmakers, NFIB members shared their stories of how tax hikes and mandates would harm their businesses.
- We heard from both Republicans and Democrats who both expressed that NFIB is the organization they turn to for small business information, and they pay attention when NFIB members take action.
- One member said her congressman is not a friend of small business owners, so she turns to NFIB to represent her and make her story heard.
- NFIB has been working to get NFIB member stories heard in a series called In Their Own Words. View here.
Vax, Masks, Etc.
- Cal/OSHA asks employers to visit this webpage and review the brief bullets of information under the “What Changed” section.
- Articles for review
Some Local Minimum Wage Increases, July 1
- ATTENTION NFIB members in Berkeley, Emeryville, Fremont, Los Angeles, Malibu, Milpitas, Pasadena, San Francisco, and Santa Monica. Your city’s minimum-wage rate increases on July 1.
- Los, Angeles, Malibu, Pasadena, and Santa Monica are not raising the rate on businesses with more than 25 employees, but they are eliminating the lower minimum-wage rate for businesses with fewer than 25 employees. All four municipalities will move to a $15-an-hour rate no matter the employee size of the firm. The business intelligence website JD Supra has more information in this article.
The State Budget
- NFIB California’s chief legislative advocate, Kevin Pedrotti, key takeaways:
- June 15, the Governor and legislature held significant differences about the size of surplus and major policy thresholds.
- The budget is a very large, very empty skeleton document providing scant detail on spending.
- Budget action for the year doesn’t end when lawmakers pass another set of budget bills that Newsom would sign before July 1.
- State leaders were overwhelmed by a nearly $76 billion surplus on top of $27 billion in federal funds announced in May.
- NFIB is watching closely since many budget trailer bills are given little advance notice or public transparency.
Federally
- Last week, NFIB’s side prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court case that dealt with a California company. “Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid affirms that small businesses have dominion over their private property and the right to exclude union organizers,” said a news release issued by NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center.
- The Supreme Court wins just kept coming. A few days later, in another case NFIB filed an amicus brief in, the justices ruled that a majority of people in a class-action lawsuit must indeed demonstrate they were legitimately injured. “This case had the potential to set a dangerous precedent in incentivizing lawyers to turn every dispute into a statutory-damages lawsuit, based on technical statutory violations and without proving the class represented suffered concrete injuries,” said Karen Harned, executive director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, in this news release.
- Next NFIB Webinar, Wednesday, June 30, 9 a.m. Pacific. PPP Forgiveness and Other COVID-19 Relief Programs, Including Employee Retention Credit. Register here.
Next Main Street Minute July 5.
