By @Aaron Avery
On September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 799 (Portantino) Unemployment insurance: trade disputes: eligibility for benefits. SB 799 would have altered existing law to make striking employees eligible for Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits.
CSDA co-led a broad coalition of local government employers, as well as K-12 and higher education employers, in opposing the bill. SB 799 would have increased costs to public agency employers, which could not have been simply passed on to consumers in the same manner as the private sector. Furthermore, the bill could have eroded good faith negotiations at the bargaining table for local government employers.
If SB 799 had become law, public employers may have experienced longer lengths of labor contract impasses, higher costs associated with protracted Public Employee Relations Broad (PERB) proceedings, and a decline in quality of public services. These impacts could have been amplified by other measures awaiting signature or veto by the Governor concerning sympathy strikes (Assembly Bill 504 (Reyes)) and collective bargaining for temporary employees (Assembly Bill 1484 (Zbur)).
As noted in Governor Newsom’s veto message, “California employers fund UI benefits through contributions to the state’s UI Trust fund on behalf of each employee… Any expansion of eligibility for UI benefits could increase California’s outstanding federal UI debt projected to by nearly $20 billion by the end of the year and could jeopardize California’s Benefit Cost Ratio add-on waiver application, significantly increasing taxes to employers.”
Stay tuned to CSDA eNews, Advocacy News, and CSDA’s 2024 New Laws series for additional updates on important labor and employment legislation and laws.
#AdvocacyNews
#FeatureNews
#LaborRelations
#HumanResourcesandPersonnel