CalChamber-Led Coalition Helps Stop 1 Job Killer Bill

Legislators Send 2 Job Killers to Governor

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On the final day of the session, Assembly members heeded the concerns raised by the California Chamber of Commerce and a coalition of more than 110 organizations and stopped a last-minute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction proposal.

AB 2133 (Quirk; D-Hayward), a job killer, would have arbitrarily changed the State’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goal from 40% of 1990 levels by 2030 to 55%. By the State’s own estimate, this proposal would have forced 17 million gas-powered cars off the road in the next 10 years. AB 2133 died in the final hour of the session when the Assembly failed to concur in Senate amendments, 37-22.

The CalChamber-led coalition opposing AB 2133 included business, agriculture, industry groups and local chambers of commerce.

“We are relieved AB 2133 failed passage and grateful to the legislators who voted no on the measure,” said CalChamber President and CEO Jennifer Barrera in a September 1 statement. “It is clear this measure would have been detrimental to our economy. The bill threatened the state with excessive costs that would have hurt both California residents and businesses.”

To Governor

Earlier in the evening, the Legislature sent to the Governor the climate change job killer SB 1137 (Lena Gonzalez; D-Long Beach).

“CalChamber supports climate change laws and regulations that are cost-effective, technology-neutral and promote the use of market-based strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Barrera emphasized again in her statement released the morning after legislators approved SB 1137.

“It is extremely disheartening that in the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers introduced two job killing climate change proposals with very little opportunity for public debate or scrutiny.”

She pointed out that lawmakers passed SB 1137 “over the objections of a large and diverse coalition of Californians. This policy will not only kill an estimated 8,000 jobs in the state; it will drive oil production out of California and force the state to rely on even more foreign oil imports that are produced in locations with less environmental and human rights protections than California. We are tremendously concerned about the fact that SB 1137 threatens the state with up to $4 billion in lost revenue and poses a significant risk of legal liability under the takings clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

SB 1137 threatens to eliminate thousands of high-paying California jobs and force California to import even more foreign oil by politicizing and undermining the California Geologic Energy Management (CalGEM) Division’s ongoing regulatory process regarding new requirements near oil and gas extraction sites by predisposing what setback requirements should be before the agency even begins its analysis.

A third job killer, AB 2183 (Stone; D-Scotts Valley), a forced unionization process for agricultural employees, was sent to the Governor on August 29.

AB 2183 limits an employee’s ability to independently and privately vote for unionization in the workplace, and forces employers into union submission, by eliminating a secret ballot election and replacing it with card check or requiring employers to waive certain rights to proceed through an untested ballot procedure under which the ballot can be filled out by labor organizations. It also unfairly limits an employer’s ability to challenge the cards submitted by forcing employers to post an unreasonable bond, and then limits an employee’s ability to decertify a union, by forcing them to go through the ballot election process instead of submission of representation cards. The bill also includes an unnecessary presumption of retaliation that is effectively unlimited in scope because it would apply for the duration of an election campaign, which could last for a year or more.

Governor Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto bills sent to him in the closing days of the legislative session.