September 17, 2024 - By Bryan Little - The California Legislature’s 2024 session yielded a small number of bills that stand to 
exacerbate the legal and regulatory challenges faced by California farm employers.
Senate Bill 399, by state Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Hayward, is California’s version of legislation Big Labor has been trying to pass in several states to restrict employer communications with employees in the workplace. As often happens with legislation, the devil is in the details, and actual legislative language can be much broader in scope than its proponents are willing to acknowledge.
SB 399 would expose an owner of a winery hosting a political candidate’s fundraiser to abusive lawsuits if one or more of his employees happens to dislike that politician. It could create legal peril for the operator of a packinghouse who posts a campaign sign opposing a ballot initiative one of his employees happens to support.
The measure’s scope is broader than advertised by its proponents because of the wide range of topics an employer is prohibited from talking to employees about, and the communication impacted by the bill would not be limited to employee meetings. The bill defines prohibited communications as employees “receiving” communications related to a very broad definition of political issues.
Ironically, as officials of the California Labor Federation were walking the halls of the Capitol pushing legislators to pass SB 399, the organization was urging its members and activists to campaign for their favored candidates and causes at workplaces across the state. That is exactly what it seeks to prohibit employers from doing in their workplaces!
The Legislature passed SB 399 on Aug. 30, and it’s not clear whether Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign or veto it. Whatever its fate, it seems likely it will be subject to legal challenges for its infringement on employers’ First Amendment right to communicate with their own employees.
The Legislature has also finished its work on another measure, Senate Bill 1299, by state Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose. The bill, passed Aug. 28, would create a presumption that a farm employee’s incidence of heat illness is automatically work-related and therefore would entitle the employee to receive workers’ compensation benefits.
That standard would apply if the employee performed any work in a week or pay period during which weather conditions would have invoked the requirements of the California Occupational Safety and Health’s Heat Illness Prevention standard, or HIP. It wouldn’t matter whether the employee’s heat illness arose at work, at a weekend soccer game or on a day-hike on the employee’s day off.
SB 1299 would apply only to farm employees and not any other type of worker working outdoors in hot weather. That reveals the political nature of the bill. When Cortese’s staff was asked about the limitation to farm employees, the answer was that the bill’s sponsor is the United Farm Workers, and that’s what it wants.
Workers’ compensation carriers have a history of receiving and paying claims related to heat illness, and the bill’s proponents failed to offer any meaningful indication that workers are suffering from uncompensated heat illness, despite evidence anyone can see of HIP standard compliance while driving roads through rural California where farm employees are at work.
Gov. Newsom has a history of vetoing bills expanding rebuttable presumptions of work-relatedness, and we’ll have to see what action he takes.
To help farm employers cope with such challenges, the California Farm Bureau created Farm Employers Labor Service. Since 1970, FELS has assisted thousands of agricultural employers, providing information, including training videos, assistance with bureaucratic paperwork and its instructive FELS Newsletter for farm employers, supervisors and employees.
FELS provides labor management consultants who are bilingual and bicultural and who offer an important bridge of understanding to our agricultural workforce. FELS was an early adopter of the internet in 1995, and we continue to work to find new ways to communicate with Farm Bureau members, farm employers and others who need to understand and find solutions to farm employers’ challenges.
Our new website, www.fels.net, features resources for farm employers trying to understand California’s new indoor heat illness standard, implications of avian flu for dairy and poultry operations and the new Workplace Violence Prevention Plan requirements passed by the Legislature in 2023.
Our FELS Newsletter exclusive content includes bilingual documents for workplace violence prevention plan, a violent incident reporting form and violence hazard assessment form, as well as instructional topics for training employees.
Farm Bureau is working every day to add value for its members, while helping farmers, ranchers and agricultural businesses meet the bureaucratic demands and other tests of operating in California.
FELS’ value-added services can help farmers become an employer of choice and avoid regulatory and legal challenges before those challenges become expensive.
(Byran Little is director of employment policy for the California Farm Bureau and chief operating officer for the affiliated Farm Employers Labor Service. He may be contacted at blittle@cfbf.com.)
The California Farm Bureau Federation works to protect family farms and ranches on behalf of nearly 32,000 members statewide and as part of a nationwide network of more than 5.5 million Farm Bureau members.
Source: Reprinted with permission CFBF
