NFIB Illinois State Director Noah Finley testified in the Illinois Senate Labor Committee against legislation that would impose costly new mandates on “employers in the construction industry.”

SB 3465 (Guzman) would require a wide range of employers to provide additional amenities, including toilets, hygienic kits, refrigeration, running water, and lactation rooms, at work sites, such as mobile work sites, new build homes, and snow removal locations.

The mandates would apply to employers regardless of size.

“SB 3465 is poorly crafted, creating more ambiguity than clarity for employers,” said NFIB Illinois State Director Noah Finley. “It would impose costly, if not unfeasible mandates, on many small businesses across the state.”

The legislation doesn’t define “employers in the construction industry,” but “construction industry” is defined elsewhere in statute as:

“[A]ny constructing, altering, reconstructing, repairing, rehabilitating, refinishing, refurbishing, remodeling, remediating, renovating, custom fabricating, maintenance, landscaping, improving, wrecking, painting, decorating, demolishing, and adding to or subtracting from any building, structure, highway, roadway, street, bridge, alley, sewer, ditch, sewage disposal plant, water works, parking facility, railroad, excavation or other structure, project development or real property or improvement, or any part thereof, whether or not the performance of the work involves the addition to, or fabrication into, any structure, project, development, or real property or improvement of any material or article of merchandise. ‘Construction industry’ also includes moving construction-related materials on the job site to or from the job site, snow plowing, snow removal, and refuse collection.”

It would also impose additional requirements on the owners of buildings under construction.