FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: John Kabateck, California State Director, john@kabstrat.com or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, anthony.malandra@nfib.org

SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 24, 2024-California’s largest and leading small business association today is reminding its members and all Main Street entrepreneurs that they have a week left to have their state-mandated workplace violence prevention plans written and available to anyone who requests to see them.

“On September 30, 2023, California Senate Bill 553 (Cortese) was signed into law and California Labor Code section 6401.9 will be in effect and enforceable on July 1, 2024. Employers that fall within the scope of this law must establish, implement, and maintain an effective written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan,” instructs the Department of Industrial Relations on a special webpage listing what should be in the plan.

“Right now, I think the workplace violence prevention plans, which every business with few exceptions must have, might be the shining example of why California has become a terrible place to do business in,” said John Kabateck, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). “But then give this Legislature time to outdo itself.”

Two NFIB-member, small business owners, Nick Montano and Sunder Ramani, are quoted in a story, Employers Scramble to Meet State Deadline for Violence Prevention Plan, published by the Los Angeles Business Journal that pinpoints the major concerns with the law. “My first reaction was that this is totally unnecessary,” said Montano. “We of course take steps to make sure our employees feel safe. They are like family. If we have a homeless guy coming into the restaurant and behaving erratically or has a knife, my employees are instructed not to intervene and instead to call the police. I don’t see how drawing up a big, complicated plan is going to change that.”

Added Ramani, “Even with all these plans and training sessions in place, I can never prove that I did everything possible to prevent a violent event from occurring. This is especially true when it’s something involving the homeless or one of these smash-and-grab robberies, situations over which I have little or no control. In effect, It’s an open-ended litigation trap.”

To answer some of many questions about workplace violence prevention plans, NFIB California invited Hannah Sweiss, an employment law expert with Fisher Phillips, to give small-business owners an informative overview of what lies ahead for them, if they haven’t already produced their plans. The 49-minute webinar can be heard through this web story.

Keep up with the latest on California small-business news at www.nfib.com/california or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_CA or on Facebook @NFIB.CA.

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For 80 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since its founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com. 

NFIB California
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Twitter: @NFIB_CA