Assembly Standing Committee on Labor and Employment

Good afternoon. Welcome to the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee hearing. In order to be able to hear as much from the public within the limits of our time, we will not permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the legislative proceedings. Commenters who impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may be ruled out of order and may be removed. We will begin our hearing as a subcommittee, and we will be going out of order, starting with Item Number Eight. Assembly Member Kalra, whenever you're ready. AB 1697.

Thank you, Madam Chair. AB 690-- AB 1697 will delay the implementation of AB 692, which I authored, by one year, until January 1st, 2027, and add an urgency clause. AB 692, debt traps, was signed into law last year to prohibit employers from using debt as an exploitative tool to trap workers in their jobs or basic on-the-job training, orientation equipment loans, or other financial arrangements necessary for them to perform their work duties.

While the bill was chaptered, there were some concerns raised about how this bill would apply to those with ongoing collective bargaining, as requested by the governor in his signing letter. AB 1697 would delay the implementation of AB 692 to allow for more time to address the concern around collective bargaining agreements. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Do we have any witnesses in support?

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. Silvio Ferrari, on behalf of the National Football League, in support. Thank you.

Seeing no others in support, do we have any witnesses in opposition? Seeing none. Assembly Member Kalra, would you like to close?

Respectfully ask for an aye vote at the appropriate time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now move to item number nine, AB 2495.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Your witness is coming.

Oh, AB and I believe there's another witness on the way. They're in security. They're coming up. AB 2495 expands the scope of prohibited unfair immigration related practices that employers use to intimidate and dissuade workers from asserting their workplace rights.

Anti-immigrant national rhetoric has emboldened bad faith employers to increasingly deter immigrant workers complaining about violation of their workplace rights by making veiled threats, chilling statements, or implicit warnings about immigration consequences.

We've seen so many examples of this, not just here in California, but throughout this nation of really unscrupulous employers that take advantage of the current environment. Not just the environment in terms of the public sentiment, but the legal environment that's also being created from at a federal level with ICE raids and just the fear that's being instilled into our community.

When this type of employer coercion succeeds, unlawful conduct goes unreported, workplace standards erode, and law abiding employers are undercut. And it really devalues and I think goes to the very dignity of work.

And we don't want workers, we don't want families to be living in the shadows. We don't want them to be fearful. And we certainly don't want to allow for employers to intimidate our workers, particularly regarding immigration or perceived immigration status.

So AB 2495 simply amends existing labor protections to establish that all immigration related threats are unlawful. Not just termination or threats that lead to some finality, but at any point during employment, these are clearly unlawful, and workers need to be protected.

With me to provide supporting testimony on the way, Yunuen Trujillo, CHIRLA's Director of Workers' Rights and Labor Legal Services, and Hailey McAllister, Senior Staff Attorney with Legal Aid at Work.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm appearing on behalf of Legal Aid at Work, which is a statewide nonprofit that advocates for workplace rights, including through direct services clinics across state, and it's also a proud co-sponsor of AB 2495. Across the country and here in California, immigrant and undocumented communities are living in heightened fear of immigration enforcement.

Over the past year, immigration enforcement actions have become more aggressive and more public, and authorities target immigrant communities in their homes, in hospitals, on their way to school, and at work. In this political climate, undocumented workers must take real and significant risks when they step forward to actively assert their workplace rights.

As a result, many workers are afraid to speak up even when they're subjected to wage theft, unsafe working conditions, or discrimination. This fear doesn't just harm immigrant workers. It undermines enforcement of California's workplace laws for everyone. Bad faith employers are exploiting this fear.

We are seeing employers weaponize immigration status not in response to direct complaints, but preemptively to silence workers before they ever can raise an issue. Advocates, including Legal Aid at Work, have seen versions of these scenarios regularly. For example, one of our cases in one of our cases, an employer announced at an all hands meeting, hey, my best friend works for ICE.

And he said, so long as there's no issues here, ICE won't come to this workplace. Or in another instance, a manager suggests to the workers that they should think about where they're gonna hide when ICE does come and suggests that they jump out the window or hide in the garbage.

In another scenario, employers suggest talking to, speaking with government agencies that enforce workplace protections will result in those agencies deporting the workers. In this situation, no worker has complained, but the message is clear. Stay quiet or face potential deportation.

This conduct effectively shuts down workers rights before they can assert them, and it's slipping through the cracks of current California protections. AB 2495 aims to close that gap and ensure that employers can't preemptively silence workers into accepting substandard working conditions. Thank you.

Thank you.

And straight from the single operable elevator in the building, we have Yunuen Trujillo, CHIRLA's Director of Workers' Rights and Labor Legal Services.

Hello, Chair and Members. Again, my name is Yunuen Trujillo, Director of Workers' Rights at CHIRLA. In 2024 and 2025, we represented dozens of workers who worked at poultry companies, and a pattern became immediately evident.

Workers who were unaware and who had been unaware for decades that the labor code protects them were coerced into providing labor using immigration status as leverage and immigration related threats for decades. After becoming aware that they had labor protections, they were too afraid to make any reports.

And their employer discouraged them from making those reports using immigration related threats. Under current labor code provisions, these workers were not protected because their situation did not fit a classic retaliation pattern.

They had never exercised the right. They didn't know they had those rights and hadn't been retaliated against, but they had faced coercion from the outset. At these poultry companies, we also saw new arrivals, minors, people who had just turned 18, who did not speak Spanish.

They only spoke Guatemalan languages like Kʼicheʼ, who didn't have access to labor rights information, similarly coerced. And as you can see, immigration based coercion is not new, but bad actors are feeling emboldened to use immigration threats.

And in 2025 and 2026, we have received more calls of workers who are being threatened and who are afraid to make any reports. So by adding coercion to the labor code and a subsection distinct from retaliation, so it's obvious that there are two different things, we can ensure protections for the most vulnerable workers, such as new arrivals. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have other witnesses in support?

Catalina Sanchez with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in support.

Monica Madrid with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, CHIRLA, proud co-sponsor in support.

Sydney Fang on behalf of AAPIs for Civic Empowerment, proud co-sponsor in support.

Ivan Fernandez, California Labor Fed, in support.

Ken Wang on behalf of the co-sponsor of Equal Rights Advocates and California Employment Lawyers Association in support. Thank you.

Chair and Members. Mari Lopez with the California Nurses Association in support.

Jim Lindburg on behalf of the Friends Committee on Legislation of California in support. And also voicing support today for Western Center on Law and Poverty. Thank you.

Gabriela Facio with Sierra Club California. We did miss the deadline to submit a letter in support, but I just wanted to be on record that we're here in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair, Committee Members. Bryant Miramontes with California Teachers Association in support.

Bernice Singh with All of Us or None Sacramento in support.

Sam Fishman, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, in support. Thank you.

Catherine Vierra Houston, United Steelworkers District 12, in support.

Thank you. Before we bring up any opposition, I do wanna acknowledge Assembly Member Lackey, who is subbing today as our Vice Chair. Welcome. Here, any main witnesses in opposition? Seeing none. I've turned it over... Oh, we're still as a subcommittee. But any questions or comments from Committee Members?

Okay. Thank you. Can we establish... Oh, okay. We'll take a moment... Before you close, we'll take a moment to establish quorum. Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

We have quorum, so we have a motion. I will second. Would you like to close?

Well, no. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to everyone that came here in support. I wanna thank the Chair and Assembly Member Lee also for being co-authors. Respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Okay. Secretary, can you please call the roll? Yeah. No one came up.

File item number 9, AB 2495, Kalra. [Roll Call]

That's three votes. We'll leave the roll open for absent Members. We will now go back to file order. We'll go with item number two.

We'll go with File Item Number Two: AB 2511 by Assembly Member Ahrens. Whenever you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members. AB 2511 requires the Department of Industrial Relations to work with other state agencies to examine pay disparities between behavioral health providers and medical-surgical care providers. DIR will collect data from healthcare plans and insurers to perform this study and will share the findings with the Legislature.

California faces a behavioral health crisis that jeopardizes the economic stability and public safety of millions of our residents, and in a time of great uncertainty, we need to ensure that we are protecting Californians. With me today is Sarah Sorkin, a marriage family therapist, and Ben Eichert, the Director of Public Policy and Legislative Affairs for the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I have provided direct care to patients in both private and public settings and have witnessed the negative consequences resulting from the chronic, systemic undervaluing of mental health and substance use disorder services. Prohibitively low reimbursement rates have kept many of my peers from accepting insurance, and this is compounded by the barriers they experienced to even getting reimbursed by insurance companies.

I haven't worked in a setting without high turnover of my colleagues due to the mismatch in the amount of financial investment, education, and training it takes to obtain and maintain a license to practice, the acuity of conditions and level of responsibility and skill required to effectively address these conditions, and overwhelming workloads and moral injury with compensation that doesn't reflect our worth.

The recent 2024 Research Triangle Institute study showed that in office visit in-network reimbursement levels were much lower for behavioral health providers than medical-surgical providers. This pokes holes in the argument that clinician shortages are the primary cause of the problems with staffing and adequate in-network provider networks.

Personally, when I transition to private practice, I don't plan to take insurance as long as reimbursement rates remain low and getting reimbursed remains a challenge. Lack of access to behavioral health services causes worsening conditions, the need for more intensive expensive care, interference with functioning and family and work roles, increased disability and need for public assistance, problems maintaining housing, and suicides and overdoses.

To address our serious problem of lack of access to behavioral health services in our state, a comparable work study is essential to understanding the problem and intervening effectively. Thank you.

Thank you.

Madam Chair and committee members, thank you. I'm Benjamin Eichert, the Public Policy Director at the National Union of Healthcare Workers. We're the state's largest union of licensed private sector behavioral health providers and the proud sponsor of AB 2511. In 2024, a California Healthcare Foundation survey found that more than half of Californians have trouble finding a mental health provider who takes their insurance. That's compared to only 14% who report difficulty finding providers who take their insurance for physical care.

When forced out of network, families face average balance bills of $861 per episode. Unfortunately, many decide to go without care, which leads some of them to decompensate and require expensive emergency interventions. In other words, the shortage of in-network behavioral health providers imposes significant cost burdens on California consumers. Ample evidence shows that behavioral health providers are not incentivized to join insurance networks because their compensation is significantly lower than that of their peers who provide physical care.

The study proposed by AB 2511 will demonstrate if and in what form these inequalities exist and clarify their role in driving behavioral health providers away from insurance networks and limiting access to behavioral healthcare for Californians. I wanna briefly address one of the concerns raised about the bill. Kaiser Permanente claims that behavioral health providers and medical surgical providers are simply too distinct to be compared, but this claim is disingenuous.

In 2024, Kaiser itself told regulators and documents filed regarding compliance with the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act that they use the same factors to, quote, establish reimbursement rates among both med-surg and mental health substance use disorder providers, end quote, and further, that, quote, similarly situated providers should have similar rates, end quote.

In other words, Kaiser has explicitly stated that behavioral health and medical-surgical providers can be compared, that the state should compare them, and that when it does compare them, it should find that similarly situated providers are being compensated at similar rates.

Ensuring that Californians who need behavioral healthcare can access it affordably is important work that the Legislature has made a priority. We appreciate the committee's consideration of this bill, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote on AB 2511. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have additional witnesses in support?

Madam Chair and members, Sara Flocks, California Federation of Labor Unions, in support.

Good afternoon. Tyler Rinde, on behalf of the California Psychological Association, in support. Thank you.

Mari Lopez, California Nurses Association, in support.

Good afternoon. Bindu Mukkamala with the National Association of Social Workers, in support, as well as on behalf of the Steinberg Institute.

Good afternoon. Shane Gusman, on behalf of the Machinist and Unite Here, in support.

Thank you. Do we have any main witnesses in opposition?

Madam Chair and members, my name is Olga Shilo. I'm here on behalf of the California Association of Health Plans. We appreciate the intent behind AB 2511 and-- to improve access to behavioral healthcare, and we share that goal. However, we must respectfully oppose the bill at this time. AB 2511 would require Health Plans to submit highly detailed payment data across multiple payment pathways, including payments to providers, intermediaries, and health systems.

Much of this information is already reported under existing requirements, and this bill would layer on new reporting requirements, creating significant administrative burdens for both the healthcare system and the state, and pulling time and resources away from patient care. The payment information subject to disclosure under this bill is also highly sensitive and proprietary. Making this data available raises serious concerns about data security and competitive harm.

In practice, again, we can contract negotiations and encourage market behavior that ultimately puts upward pressure on premiums for employers and consumers. This bill further shifts this reporting to a different agency at the Department of Industrial Relations, duplicating existing regulatory oversight without addressing the underlying access challenges or workforce shortages we are trying to solve.

CAHP recognizes that California faces a well-documented shortage of behavioral health providers, particularly those willing to contract with plans and insurers. More broadly, thin networks and high, out-of-network charges are driven by that shortage, and by market dynamics, where providers can remain out of network, set their own rates, and bill full charges. Unfortunately, this weakens incentives to participate in networks and pushes healthcare costs even higher.

Ultimately, 2511 is a costly data collection exercise that does not meaningfully expand access to care, support workforce development, or strengthen enforcement of existing mental health parity laws. While CAHP is committed to working with the author if the bill moves forward today, we remain respectfully opposed at this time. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members. David Gonzalez, on behalf of America's Physician Groups, APG. I wanna apologize to the committee and to the author for our late letter. We got that a little bit late, so I apologize for that. But I appreciate the opportunity to comment.

So APG, our provider is focused on providing value-based care in the capitated setting, and in California, we're very proud of the fact that our providers provide-- they have really high scores in terms of value-based outcomes, in terms of bending the affordability curve in the right way and keeping those costs down, and so very proud of that, and I wanna emphasize that that comes from the work of our members. So our healthcare professionals, that's their good work.

So California is very fortunate that we have some very great healthcare professionals that are part of our groups that provide excellent care. We're helping to bend that cost curve and provide incredibly great quality of care. And so this is not an opposition to the concern about that. And frankly, we have concerns about the workforce as well. It's an aging workforce. There's not a lot of people.

We all know the problem of recruiting people in rural areas, so that's a complicated issue, and we're with you on the problem. The problem that we have is that as providers in California, we're facing a deluge of bad information, right? At the federal level, through HR 1, we're seeing catastrophic cuts to our programs. I don't think we even realize that California just get what that means in terms of our delivery system, but they're apocalyptic.

I can tell you that. We're talking to our clinics, we're talking to our infrastructure system, and these are huge, massive cuts that will have incredible impacts on the delivery of care, and this is stuff that we provide the updates to our providers, and it's always bad news at a weekly level, and these are providers we're trying to get excited about providing healthcare in California.

That's just really, really consistently bad news. So I think we all share that problem. And at the same time, we're also being told to do more with less. And so whether it's the state payer saying to do more with MLRs, medical loss ratios, or spend less on administrative costs and do more for healthcare, which we're supportive of, but these types of issues sort of take some of that and requires us to spend some of those resources more on administrative issues.

Same with the commercial pairs as well. The reimbursement issues are getting tough, and so we're having to do more with less. And so for those reasons, we are opposed, but we completely sympathize with the issue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have additional witnesses in opposition?

Hi. Angela Hill with the California Medical Association, in respectful opposition.

Hi. Ryan Berdua here with Kaiser Permanente, in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Leah Barros, on behalf of California Hospital Association with a more nuanced opposed unless amended position.

Andrea Lynch, on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce, in respectful opposition.

I like all the respectful opposition as opposed to just opposition.

Seeing no other witnesses with respectful opposition, I will now move it over to the members. Any questions or comments? Yes, Assembly Member.

The-- thank you, Madam Chair. I wanna respectfully thank the author for bringing this bill forward and recognizing the importance of behavioral health and that for so many years, it was-- yeah, certainly, we were growing up--and I was growing up a little older--but when I was growing up, it was considered, you know, kind of subsidiary to physical health.

I think now we all know how important behavioral health is and-- however, we need data in order to ensure that we are preparing for the workforce that we need if we truly, truly want to expand services in behavioral health.

And witnesses noticed that-- noted already that this information is already reported, but if it hadn't been reported, I would imagine the cost would be-- you can make an argument there'd be some cost. Well, the information is already there. Health insurance companies, hospitals, they're some of the most detailed oriented businesses you will find in any industry. They have all the data available.

The question is what they wanna make it available for the purposes of this bill. I think it's a worthy purpose if our goal is to ensure that people are being properly compensated and we can make sure we have a workforce for the future. And transparency, you know, if there's a fear that transparency will impact market pressure, typically, transparency on data creates market pressure to reduce costs.

Right now, we have an industry, the health insurance industry in particular, that is shrouded intentionally in secrecy. But we don't know why our premiums go up double digits every year. They just happen to. And so, the fact that you're willing to and want to and dive into this to get the right information so we can make better decisions, I think, is admirable and necessary. I'd like to move the bill, and I'd like to be added as a co-author.

Thank you.

We have a motion and a second. Any other comments? Seeing none. You have a strong aye recommendation from me, and thanks again for bringing this bill forward. Secretary, can you please call the roll?

File Item Number Two: AB 2511.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Would you like to close?

Yes. Respectfully ask for your aye.

File Item Number Two: AB 2511, Ahrens. Motion is do pass and re-refer to Committee on Health. [Roll call].

We have three ayes. We'll remain-- leave the roll open for remaining members.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Our following item is Item Number Four: AB 2157. Assembly Member Connolly, whenever you are ready. Just a quick reminder for our witnesses. You have two minutes each, and please make sure the microphone is close to you so we can hear you. Thank you.

Item number seven, AB2530, Assemblymember Caloza. Whenever you're ready.

Just wait for my witness. Alright. Good afternoon. Thank you, chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to present AB 12530, which would require a sixty day notice to public employers before layoffs, relocations, and closures. Thank you as well to the committee consultants and staff for all their hard work on this bill.

I would like to accept the committee's amendments, that would narrow the bill, to public agencies and require notification to employees of the sale of the company. AB2530 brings the California Fair Notice Act into closer alignment with the Federal WARN Act, which stands for the Worker Adjustment and retraining notification. This is an important and timely step towards strengthening protections for workers across our state. At its core, this bill is about fairness, transparency, and dignity in the workplace.

When businesses face difficult decisions like downsizing or closing, workers deserve advance notice, so they can prepare and support families and transition to new opportunities.

Aligning our state law with a federal framework creates clarity for employers and consistency for employees. AB2530 is especially significant because, as I mentioned, it applies to both public and private employers. Because too often, we know that conversations about layoffs focus solely on private sector, but public sector employees, as, many of us are in this room, keep our state and our communities running.

And we know that given the state's, budget deficit, the things that are happening, across the country, now more than ever, we know that, we need to do more to strengthen these protections and give advance notice to protect workers' rights. I also just wanna express that, you know, AB2530 doesn't prevent layoffs.

It doesn't stop, the realities of the economy and what's going on in the world, But it just make sure that we give that advance notice and respect to workers so that they could make a plan and figure out how to transition to their next opportunity. Today, I have with me to AB2530 is Sandra Barreiro with SEIU California.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members, and thank you assembly member for authoring this bill. Sandra Barreiro on behalf of SEIU California. Classified employees and teachers are provided sixty days Layoff Notice statutorily in ed code, but all other public employees have to bargain for advance notice. So this means that notice provided to public employees is inconsistent across the state. While some employers could provide sixty days, I've seen other contracts ranging from ten to thirty days.

As more workers live paycheck to paycheck, that's not enough notice to keep the lights on and food in the fridge, especially when bills are due every month. We're also seeing massive layoffs resulting from HR 1 and skyrocketing gas prices due to Trump's war in Iran. So the situation is likely to get worse. And during the pandemic, we saw that SEIU members working in EDD bear the the brunt of the public's blame when the system is overwhelmed and understaffed.

By requiring sixty days advance notice, this bill would allow EDD to prevent delays so workers can pay their bills on time and stay financially afloat.

And some workers might be able to find a job within sixty days and never have to file a UI claim. I respectfully request your support. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have additional witnesses in support? Seeing none, do we have any main witnesses in opposition?

Do we have additional witnesses in support? Seeing none, do we have any main witnesses in opposition?

Come on up.

Sorry. A bit of a tweener. Appreciate the grace. Dorothy Johnson. I'm with the Association of California School Administrators.

We're working with the author's office to make sure that this doesn't apply to education agencies, which have statutory requirements for layoff notices and that process as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Attorney seeing no other comments in opposition, I'm turning it over to our Members. Oh, sorry. Is there one more?

Sorry. Hi. Andrea Lynch on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce. We just wanna thank the author for working with us on our concerns, and we'll be submitting a letter to that effect.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Seeing no other comments in opposition, we will now move to the dias. Any questions or comments from member? Yes.

Great. Thank you for this this work and this expansion. I'm just wondering, strive for me a situation where this might apply because there's something I might be confused or I'm I'm sort of missing in here where, obviously, yes, we'd wanna be able to provide the sixty day notice and let the worker become aware of a potential decision in the case of, for example, our teachers. The notices go out there.

Hopefully and often, you know, we end up, successfully at the local level bargaining that and then, like, you know, the jobs are never lost to you, but you have to do that sequentially to give them the opportunity.

I would hate if that is gonna spur, like, you know, some people to I know on one hand, you have to balance that risk and think as, okay, am I likely to sort of, like, you know, lose the job in the next fiscal year? But on the other hand, this requires, in the case of the sale or part of part or all of an employer's business, but these are public agencies that aren't gonna be sold. So when when when might this be like?

Can you give me a scenario that, like, you know, we're trying to protect here?

Yeah. Thank you for your question, Assemblymember Ward. You know, one of the things and one of the intents of this bill was to include, as we mentioned, public agencies into the California Warren Act. I think this is a good example of, something where the Federal Government actually has stronger protections with notifying, employees. So we worked with this committee on amendments for this to only apply to public agencies.

So, some of the language, I apologize, might be a little bit confusing in as it relates to talking about businesses, but this is narrowed now just to include public agencies. I do think that's important. There's some notices that, you know, we talked about where, you know, are already occurring as, Sandra mentioned because that's already included, in their bargaining like LEAs. And so this would include a public agencies that don't already have that notification. It would apply.

Happy to work with the opposition to clarify any additional language. But one example that we saw, for instance, is the city of San Francisco has about a $1,000,000,000 deficit, and they are issuing layoff notices. Thankfully, their contract, includes a sixty day notice period. So those employees are given sixty days notice to look for another opportunity and to make a plan. We are working to prevent, you know, future instances if these layoffs were to happen at a public agency end.

And so I think for for me, one of the things that I wanted to do to be a responsible public employer was to make sure that we're doing our part and the things that we're requiring, public employer.

Thank you. And Aye, just realized that we, amendments that were not, that are here at the desk, that were not a part of the analysis, and that's great. I will digest those, and I certainly, support the intent that, you're seeking here.

And I guess I and again, just, like, sort of looking at the digest really fast because the sale the bill is gonna require, in the case of a sale of an employer's business, that the seller would be responsible for providing any notice to the mass layoff, Yada Yada Yada, and then make the purchaser responsible for providing the notice following the effective date of the sale, but there's no purchaser of a government entity. And I'm just

Yeah. There's some language that we're working to clean up because originally, the bill was see, there's some clarifying language there. I see a passage of post its at the times. Right.

And so you're improving upon. Yeah.

And adding a proficient Correct.

The part of the business. Got it. Okay. Alright.

So two so it's not necessarily in a build limit in public place. Correct. Happy to support you.

Happy to follow-up afterward as well if there's anything confusing. We're working with the committee and appreciate the work of the staff to help clean up some of the language of the bill, but mostly the the main thing to take away is that the amendments narrow the bill to include public agencies as we are one of the state's largest employers.

Given all the budget deficits that are going on right now and some of the projected layoffs that we're already hearing happen, we wanna make sure that public workers are protected and they get the notice that they need, should any layoffs happen.

Yes.

As do Aye. Thank you.

Okay. So see do we have any other questions or comments? Seeing none, would you like to close?

Respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Secretary, can you please call the roll?

Yes. File item number

Do we have a motion and a second? Okay. We have a motion and a second.

File item number 7, AB2530 Caloza. Motion is do passed as amended and we refer to committee on judiciary. [Roll call]

That bill is out, but we will leave it on call for absent Members. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay. We will now move, to item number five and six. Assemblymember Schiavo, whenever you are ready. We have a motion and second. Whenever you're ready.

This is on 2488. Correct?

Yes.

We're starting there.

Oh, jinx.

Okay. Thank you so much. Happy to be here today to present on 2488, which is the workplace safety inspector study. California's division of occupational safety and health or DOS, plays a critical role in protecting the health and safety of over 20,000,000 workers across the state. These inspectors are responsible for investigating complaints, conducting workplace inspections, and enforcing safety laws, and keeping workers safe on the job.

However, DOSH has been chronically short staffed, undermining its ability to carry out this mission. For example, in twenty twenty three, twenty four, DOSH had a vacancy rate of 32% with even higher shortages in certain regions and positions. This level of under staffing limits inspect of under staffing limits inspections, delays responses to safety concerns, and weakens enforcement of workplace protections. These vacant vacancies are driven by challenges like slow hiring processes, rigid qualification standards, and limited workforce development pathways.

AB2488 takes a data driven approach to address the root cause of these vacancies.

The bill directs the department of invest industrial relations to partner with the University of California to conduct a comprehensive study on the causes of these vacancies. It also requires identifying new workforce pipelines, improving recruitment and retention strategies, and incorporating input from key stakeholders. This effort will help the state build stronger, more diverse, and more effective safety inspection workforce. Excuse me. Ultimately, AB 2488 ensures California is better equipped to enforce workplace safety laws and protect workers across all industries.

Here to testify in support is Laurie Wallace from United Steelworkers local six seventy five and a member and a former refinery worker and Jordan Uter from WorkSafe.

Hi again. Hi. For the last twenty years, I have worked as the process technician oil refiner at Phillips sixty six refinery in Wilmington. I am also a proud member of the United Steelworkers Local six seventy five. When Phillips sixty six announced the closure last year, hundreds of us lost our jobs.

I immediately look for ways to transition my decades of experience in refinery operations and process safety management into a role at Cal OSHA. Protecting workers and our community was my key goal. Cal OSHA has specialized units responsible for overseeing the state's 13 refineries. Yet many of these critical positions remain vacant while experienced workers like me are being laid off. The barrier is simple.

Cal OSHA positions often require a college engineering degree For those of us who have spent twenty years on rotating shifts and mandatory overtime, pursuing a four year degree was nearly impossible. However, we have received hundreds of hours of specialized hands on health and safety training. At my refinery, I worked around tanks with a five mile blast radius. Who better to understand how to enforce safety rules than the workers who live them every day? Currently, I do not even qualify to apply for these enforcement rules.

We are missing a bridge between the veteran workers and the agencies that need our expertise. AB2488 solves this by creating a recruitment and training pathway for skilled workers to join Cal OSHA. I urge you to support AB 2488 to ensure that decades of safety extra expertise do not go to waste. Thank you.

Madam Chair and the Members of the Committee, my name is Jordan Hueter, and I'm the legal and policy associate for WorkSafe. We are a proud sponsor of AB2488. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. California's workplace safety enforcement system is failing, and workers are paying for it with their health, their livelihoods, and their lives. As of November 2025, 100 Cal OSHA field inspector positions sit vacant.

That is a 33 vacancy rate. Nine district offices are operating at a 50% capacity or worse. The result is a ratio of one field inspector for every 99,000 California workers. In comparison, Oregon protects its workers at a ratio of one to 23,000. Washington, one to 28,000.

California is falling behind. The California state auditor found last July that CalOSHA resolved 82% of validated worker complaints, not with inspections, but with letters. Form letters sent in lieu of enforcement, and that practice has continued until 2025. Meanwhile, citations in high hazard industries such as construction, manufacturing, transportation, and health care have declined sharply. Generally, when enforcement disappears, deterrence disappears with it.

Employers who cut corners on safety face no consequence. Hazards go uncorrected, and workers get hurt or worse. And this burden does not fall equally. Because of occupational segregation, black and Latinx immigrant workers are concentrated disproportionately in most dangerous and lowest wage industries. For example, warehousing, agriculture, meat processing, and manufacturing.

And those sectors where much of the workforce is immigrant and non English speaking, a culturally competent enforcement agency is a legal and moral necessity. The COVID pandemic reminded every one of us what is at stake when workplace protections fail. We learned that lesson at enormous cost. We cannot now allow CalOSHA to wither through disinvestment and neglect. So filling these vacancies requires more than traditional recruiting strategies.

State must remove the structural barriers to entry, invest in targeted and diverse recruitment, and build accessible workforce pathways that bring skilled, multilingual workers into the compliance officer pipeline. The committee should be clear eyed about what the staffing crisis actually is, a policy choice made over decades to place the cost of workplace injury onto workers and families rather than onto the employers whose unsafe conditions caused the harm. California can do better.

The workers in the state deserve no less, and therefore, we, respectfully urge this committee to pass AB2488, which would design a workforce training and recruitment program that could diversify and increase the candidate pool of CalOSHA inspectors. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Catalina Sanchez on behalf of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in support. Thank you.

Additional witnesses in support. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME, California in support. Thank you.

Julie Sebastian with California Labor for Climate Jobs in support.

Catherine Nuneira Houston, United Steelworkers District 12 in support.

Judy, East State Billing Trades in support.

JP Hannah with the California Nurses Association in support.

Do we have any main witnesses in opposition? Today's a strange day. I'm It's a good day. It's a good day. Seeing no other witnesses in opposition Keep it going for my next bill.

Turn it over to our dias for any comments from our members. We had a motion and a second. I will comment. Thank you for bringing this bill forward. It is an issue that I've been working since I got to the legislature, and the audit that you mentioned is one that I requested.

When I heard about the the vacancies and other issues that are happening within the OSHA the Department of OSHA, not just leading to workplace injuries, but workplace deaths. And so really, you know, commend you for bringing this bill forward. 33% vacancy rate is just unacceptable. And, you know, the one of the main problems that I've had with this number is that it's been going on for decades. It is not new.

And so for me to, you know, just to continue to hear, from this department excuse after excuse as to why they haven't filled these vacancies is completely absurd. And glad that we're moving this bill forward, to hopefully find some more additional answers, to help address this critical issue. So thank you. With that, we have a motion and a second. Would you like to close?

Thank well, thank you for your leadership on this. It is, you know, it's systemic. It's it's clear at this point. It's systemic, and so if you wanna change it, you have to change the system. You know, workers have fought tooth and nail for safer work conditions.

We have to make sure that we can enforce it to protect them. And, you know, clearly, there's qualified workers out there who wanna do this work, and we have to figure out how to change the system to make sure that they can so that workers are protected in California.

Thank you so much.

Alright. Final item number five, AB 2488 Schiavo. Motion is do passed and we refer to committee on appropriations. [Roll call]

That bill is out. We'll leave the a roll open for absent members. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Is that enough? No. Okay.

Think I had it wrong. Thank you. Maybe it got fixed.

Whenever you're ready. Okay. We're item number six.

Yes. Thank you so much. So madam chair and members, thank you for the opportunity to present AB 2545, the AI Deployment and Workforce Development Assessment. Before we dive in, I just wanted to thank the committee for their thoughtful analysis and share that we've been working closely with Cal Chamber to address, some of their technical concerns. And I think through the amendments, they have main concerns addressed, but we'll let them speak for themselves, but appreciate the the productive dialogue.

And, you know, I think it's best to start this discussion with a reality check that's provided in the committee's own analysis. Economists are deeply divided on how AI will reshape our world, but they agree on one point, which is if this technology advances quickly, millions of jobs will be lost. So, we have to be clear, this is something that should concern everyone. Even AI developers, and tech leaders are warning that their product could cause mass employment disruption.

Anthropic's CEO has said that technology could eliminate half of entry level white collar work, while Microsoft's AI chief predicted that most professional work will be replaced within a year to eighteen months.

So not only is this a serious concern, but it's an urgent one. We're already seeing the first wave of impact in the first few months of 2026. We have witnessed massive layoffs in an industry that's rebranding, rebranding these layoffs as restructuring. If you look at the handout that we're gonna pass around, did you? Already did. That already got passed around. Thank you.

You know, you can see that major firms are laying off workers to fund multibillion dollar AI infrastructure. And, you know, adding these up, it's 127,000 workers just in the first few months of 2026. One of the largest being Oracle, which is cutting up to 30,000 workers while ramping up their spending on AI data centers. UPS has closed 24 building, buildings and is cutting 30,000 jobs as well, part of their expansion of automation.

Block, Dell, Citigroup are all in the process of cutting thousands of jobs, and it's not because of a bad economy or these companies are struggling.

They're making money. But their CEOs explicitly state that the AI tools have made large portions of their workforce redundant. We're already seeing medical researchers, software engineers, and project leads being programmed out of a job by the very tools that they helped build. A new recurring report released by Anthropic on the labor market impacts of AI suggests that workers most vulnerable to this displacement are likely to be older, female, more educated, higher income.

This may not only be part of the, this well, this may only be part of the story.

Estimates and projections and expectations are all that the AI revolution hits the core of the middle class, which is 75% of our economy. We also have to look at our students. We're hearing reports of young people graduating with massive school loans that they can't pay back because entry level positions are disappearing. Even fresh graduates out of law school are struggling to get junior associate roles because, if the entry level of the workforce is erased by AI, how do we maintain a pipeline of future leadership?

We've already seen what happens when we're blindsided by a massive shift of employment.

During the pandemic, 8.6 million Californians filed for unemployment. It cost the state $35,000,000,000 and it left us with over $20,000,000,000 in debt. We didn't see that coming, but with AI, we can. If even a fraction of the AI displacement predictions come true, we must have a plan on how we're both going to support displaced workers and to find new employment and pay for the safety net needed in the interim.

We cannot have a future where a few tech corporations continue to make record profits while California's workers and middle class are completely left behind.

Experts estimate that 300,000,000 jobs could be displaced globally in the next ten years. This translates to billions of dollars and added strain on unemployment, insurance, CalFresh, Medi Cal, job retraining, our public education institutions, and we must have a plan for tomorrow on how to manage that strain. Eighty twenty-five forty-five is an attempt to address these potential impacts before it's too late by doing two things:

It establishes the AI Worker Impact Data Assessment project within EDD to study these industry shifts, and also the data that's still needed that we don't have yet. And the second is, while we didn't have language ready by the deadline, we are going to also include, an amendment to ensure that the study also includes recommendations on how we ensure that our safety net programs remain solvent.

And I thought it was important to include that in the discussion today even though it's not yet in the bill because we need to know how we're going to support these displaced workers until they are retrained and back on their feet. There's so many important conversations happening now around AI, having human overrides, ensuring it's a tool and not a boss, protecting our kids.

And while there's certainly still time for us to, and we must, impact how AI is implemented, we simultaneously need to ensure that we have data and research needed to plan for a stable financial future. So while this is simply a study bill, I also think it's forcing us to have one of the most in court, important conversations of this moment. And what will AI's true impact on workers be, and how do we plan for that economic fallout?

California leads in innovation, and we must lead in finding a path to a sustainable future for all of us. I am joined by Sarah Flocks from the California Labor Federation and Sam Gordon from Tech Equity to testify as well.

Madam chair, members Sarah Flocks, California Federation of Labor Unions. In the nineteen eighties and nineties, we saw deindustrialization hollow out entire regions of this country, devastating workers and communities and leaving a legacy of destruction we live with today of opioid addiction, of polarization, of long term unemployment. Today, we are facing a crisis of dehumanization. We are seeing the mass elimination and replacement of humans and human workers with artificial intelligence.

And this is happening at, on a scale and with a velocity where it may not be possible for the economy and for policymakers to catch up and prevent this destruction.

The Challenger Jobs Report that tracks layoffs said that the first time, AI related layoffs were reported was in 2023. Two years later, there were 72,000 jobs that were related to AI, that were eliminated because of AI. You heard from the author that in just 2026, that number has grown exponentially. We are facing a crisis, and we need information so that policymakers can act because we cannot trust these companies to do it themselves.

They come back with the promise of, like, well, new jobs will be created, and they'll be safer, and they'll be higher skilled and better paid.

What are they? Simply having a study that can identify where jobs are gonna be besides what they say, which is construction and care jobs, which are physically demanding and may destroy workers and, you know, not allow them, the long careers that they want if we destroy all the jobs that are in, that involve thinking. And the other piece is that all of this elimination of human jobs is being done because they are sucking data.

They are extracting data out of workers and out of all of us to be real. And just saying none of us are being compensated for that, yet they're able to train their products and make money.

So I think this is an important bill. I just hope, I wish that it would just happen tomorrow, and urge support.

Hi. Good afternoon, madam chair, members of the committee. My name's Samantha Gordon. I'm with Tech Equity. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and support.

The author reviewed sort of the headlines. You all know you're on the labor commute on the labor committee. This is in the news every single day. Right? These layoffs are happening.

And I think it's important to point out that not only are, you know, people advertising that these layoffs are happening, the public is very concerned. Right? There's been poll after poll, national polls, polls in California. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat, a Republican, what your gender is, what your race is, what your background is. Everyone is concerned that they're gonna lose their job to AI.

And so I just wanna underscore, I wanna, like, put my nerd hat on because we do a lot of research on this, the, the sort of importance of this bill and really getting our arms around what data exists, what data doesn't exist, and what does that mean for not only workers, but also for the safety net and the programs that we are responsible to provide to people in those transitions.

So right now, a lot of the studies that are coming out are based on this idea of task exposure. So they take sort of voluntary AI usage, what you and I might do with a chatbot, and look at what types of tasks we ask the bot to do, and then determine could that sort of task be done fully by an AI and not by a human expert. And then they extrapolate from there.

Okay. How exposed is a job that has these sorts of tasks in it to displacement? So that information is really helpful. Right? Because it tells us signals about where the technology is going, who's likely to be, you know, impacted, whether that's older women or young college graduates or what types of jobs, but it doesn't give us a full enough picture to make really strong economic sort of predictions and make sure our fund is ready.

Right? So as the author said, if even a fraction of what the tech CEOs are saying becomes true, whether it's hyperbole or not, if a fraction of it becomes true, we are woefully underprepared. Woefully. And so at this moment, we need to really assess what can the state do, what is it already doing. Right?

EDD does great work on labor market indicators. What is the Federal Government doing? How can we pull all of that together and make really smart recommendations? Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have additional witnesses in support?

Hi, chair members. JP Hanna on behalf of the California Nurses Association in support.

Catherine Veer Houston, United Steelworkers, District 12, in support.

Shane Gusman on behalf of SAG-AFTRA and the Teamsters in support.

Good after, good afternoon. Hope Wallen, registered nurse with California Nurses Association, I support.

Hi. Jane Churchon, RN, California Nurses Association, in support.

Thank you. Seeing no other witnesses in support, do we have any main witnesses in opposition?

Now we will move to item number 10, Assembly Member Ward, AB 2027. Whenever you are ready.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I am grateful for the opportunity to present my triple referred bill, AB 2027, for and I wanna thank, your committee staff hard work on this bill. AB 2027 addresses a growing gap in our labor laws as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in our workplace.

Today, worker powers, worker data is powering the AI economy. Employers are increasingly collecting detailed information about how workers perform their jobs through surveillance tools, software systems, and day to day workflows. That data is then being used to train AI systems, which can replicate, automate, or replace those same workers.

In other words, workers are being asked, often unknowingly, to train their own replacements. While California has been a national leader in protecting consumer data, we have not yet begun to extend similar protections to workers in the workplace. This bill, AB 2027, establishes clear and reasonable guardrails.

First, it limits the collection and use of worker data to what is strictly necessary to administer the employee employment relationship. Secondly, it prohibits employers from using worker data to train or deploy AI systems intended to replace workers. And third, it prevents the sale or sharing of worker data to third parties for the purpose of outside job automation.

The bill also ensures that vendors are held to the same standard. Companies providing workplace technologies cannot use worker data to train their own AI products or share that data with others to automate jobs. Importantly, AB 2027 includes strong accountability measures.

It provides enforcement through the Labor Commissioner and gives workers the ability to seek relief if their rights are violated. These protections are necessary because the impacts are already being felt across all industries. Workers in call centers, logistics, and tech, as you heard from the previous bill, are increasingly being asked to document their work in ways that are later used to automate their roles.

And as history has shown, the impacts of technological displacement fall hardest on low income and marginalized workers. So AB 2027 is about fairness, dignity, and economic security. Let me be clear. This does not ban artificial intelligence in the workplace.

It simply ensures that innovation does not come at the expense of workers being used as a free resource to train the systems that replace them. We also recognize concerns raised by stakeholders and the committee regarding implementation definitions and scope, and we're committed to refining the bill and taking amendments to ensure that it's both effective and workable.

California has always led the way in setting responsible standards for emerging technologies. AB 2027 continues that leadership by ensuring that as AI advances our workers are protected. With me today in support are Ivan Fernández with the California Labor Federation and Shane Gusman on behalf of the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council.

Hello, Madam Chair and Members. Ivan Fernández of the California Labor Fed, proud co-sponsor AB 2027. This year, the Labor Fed is sponsoring a package of bills, some that you have already seen, establishing technology rights as the new labor standards for the 21st century.

And this is an integral part of that package because of the pressing need to prevent worker data from being used to eviscerate millions of jobs. Every day, there's an article published about the looming threat of AI induced job loss. And these articles often include anecdotes from big tech executives acknowledging this fact.

The CEO of Anthropic has previously predicted that unemployment can spike up to 20% in the next five years. And just recently, the head of Microsoft's AI division said that white collar work, for the most part, can be automated in the next two years. But what's conveniently left out of these talking points is the fact that these tools still rely on workers and still relies on their data.

Data is gold in this AI economy, and it's necessary to train and develop agentic systems because these systems are only as useful as the data that is used that they are trained on. So if the goal is to quickly automate these jobs for corporate profit, then data worker, data from a worker on how they actually do their jobs is becoming extremely valuable, and we don't and we believe that workers should not be forced to train their replacements.

For example, call center workers have dealt with forced AI integration for many years. By listening in on these conversation, AI agents are now able to draft scripts and even answer some calls. I'm sure many Members on this Committee may have already interacted with an AI agent over the phone.

And as these systems continue to learn, everyday Californians grow increasingly vulnerable to deskilling and replacement. And with nearly every job in the knowledge industry being impacted by AI, workers have no escape or protection. AB 2027 establishes nation leading protections by prohibiting employers and AI vendors from using worker data for automation purposes.

And I also wanna state, our goal is not to prevent employers from using routine systems like email servers or sharing information for payroll purposes. Our goal is to prevent the undignified scenario of a worker contributing to the stripping of their livelihood. And for this reason, I respectfully urge your aye vote at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Shane Gusman on behalf of Teamsters California, proud co-sponsor of the bill. And also the Amalgamated Transit Union, Unite Here, the Utility Workers Union of America, the Machinists Union, and the Engineers and Scientists of California, all in support of the bill.

We feel that workers desperately need this bill. It accomplishes some very important things for workers as they face what's happening very rapidly in the work, in the workplace with AI. Number one, it protects worker privacy. I think there's an assumption out there that workers, once they enter the workplace, have no privacy or no right to privacy.

And it's not true. And I think we need to step in and protect that. The other thing is mentioned by the previous witness is that when you require a worker to train their own replacement, it's incredibly exploitive. But it's exponentially so when you they're training a machine to replace them. And at least when a worker trains another worker to replace them, they get paid to do it.

In this instance, their data is being taken and sold and the employer's making money off of it and then replacing them with a machine. The other thing is that, you know, selling employee data and allowing that data to train replacements is only exacerbating the problems that we already see.

And I've talked about in this committee with the growth of AI surveillance and monitoring in the workplace. Workers are being demoralized in the workplace. It's impacting safety and it's impacting productivity. So we strongly support this bill. A witness to the previous bill talked about the data, the public opinion polling, how people are concerned about AI in the workplace.

Part of that polling also shows that the public doesn't trust the AI companies or companies that utilize the AI to police themselves. They want the government to step in, and that's across all party lines, across all demographics. So we think this bill is appropriate and falls within that, and we urge your aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have additional comments in support?

Good afternoon, Chair and Committee Members. Bryant Miramontes with the California Teachers Association in support. Thank you.

Catherine Vierra-Houston, United Steelworkers District 12, in support.

Samantha Gordon with TechEquity in support.

Carlos Lopez, California School Employees Association, in support.

JP Hanna with the California Nurses Association in support. I've also been asked to provide support on behalf of the California Faculty Association. Thank you.

Judy Yee, State Building Trades, in support.

Jason Henderson on behalf of the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges in support.

Hope Wallen, registered nurse on behalf of California Nurses Association, in support.

Jane Churchon, California Nurses Association, in support.

Seeing no other witnesses. Any main witnesses in opposition? Thank you. Whenever you are ready. Your seats are getting cold.

Just warming up. Good afternoon. Andrea Lynch on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce in respectful opposition to AB 2027. Two overarching concerns we wanna address with AB 2027 are the overly broad definition of worker data, and two, restrictions on an employer's use to only what is strictly necessary. Sorry.

So worker data is defined in relevant part as the following, information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked directly or indirectly with the personal information relating to a worker.

Regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or obtained, including but not limited to a worker's biometric data, employment history, or personal identifying information. This sweeping language potentially captures all workplace information, including email communications and payroll systems.

Because these terms are highly subjective and undefined, employers are left without clear guidance on what information is actually covered. Further, this creates confusion regarding what data may be lawfully collected or used in the ordinary course of business and makes compliance difficult. Second, employers use of the worker data is limited to, limited to only what is strictly necessary. But AB 2027 fails to define what that actually means.

By broadly restricting the use of worker data, the bill fails to distinguish between technologies that replace workers and tools that assist employees in performing routine tasks more efficiently, including tools that support accessibility for workers with disabilities as discussed in our opposition letter.

As drafted, this language risks discouraging responsible innovation and limiting workplace technologies that improve productivity, accuracy, and job quality. For these and other reasons, we respectfully oppose AB 2027 and respectfully ask for your no vote. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm Eric Lawyer speaking on behalf of the California State Association of Counties in respectful opposition to AB 2027. First, we understand the concerns that motivated the author and sponsor.

However, we are concerned the bill could severely limit or outright prohibit the use of tools already being used by public agencies to improve delivery of services, mitigate disaster risk, strengthen the social safety net, and empower the public workforce to grow, develop, and replace rote tasks with more meaningful work.

This bill will prohibit employers from deploying artificial intelligence tools if they are trained with worker data to replicate, automate, or replace a worker's job. What does that mean exactly? Consider the example of an AI tool used to detect water contamination, which is currently in use.

That tool has been developed with the input of professionals, the exact type of training that could warrant prohibition of a tool by this bill. Something like a water, water contamination detection tool could easily meet the definition of automating or replicating a worker's job.

But does it mean that all water quality scientists are replaced by robots or AI? No. It helps those professionals detect problems more rapidly in a more locations than they could without it. I mentioned just one example of the types of AI tools that supplement the work of public employees.

Public agencies also use AI to detect earthquakes and wildfire, enhance road and dam safety, reduce energy demands for wastewater treatment, and accelerate permitting following the wildfires in Los Angeles, to name just a few examples. We believe in the responsible, transparent, and ethical use of artificial intelligence.

We believe in protecting workers from mass displacement. We believe it's critical to protect the privacy of the public we serve and our public employees. Public agencies have zero interest in replacing public sector employees with machines.

We do believe in using new technology to better serve residents of California and improve conditions for the public workforce. AB 2027 would go too far in limiting these technologies, and for that reason, I respectfully ask for your no vote.

Thank you. Any other comments in opposition?

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Chris Micheli here on the on behalf of the Civil Justice Association of California in opposition. Thank you.

Sarah Dukett on behalf of the Rural County Representatives of California, the Urban Counties of California, and the California Special District Association in respectful opposition.

Good afternoon. Mark Farouk on behalf of the California Hospital Association in opposition.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. We'll keep the respectful going. Melissa Koshlaychuk on behalf of Western Growers in respectful opposition.

Good afternoon. Johnnie Pina with the League of California Cities in opposition. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Nick Chiappe on behalf of the California Trucking Association in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Jose Torres with TechNet in opposition.

Good afternoon. Elizabeth Esquivel with the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, also in opposition.

Seeing no other comments in opposition, I will now turn it over to the dais for comments or questions from Members.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move the bill and appreciate the author for his work in this space and with his legislation. And, you know, whenever I hear opposition to this kind of legislation about being too broad, too vague.

That's where I encourage, rather than just blanket opposition, to actually help to better define it. If there's if there's an issue with, well, that means all emails will then define it. Okay. We don't mean this.

If it's gonna impact being able to use water quality tools by a water engineer, then say, okay. We wanna make sure safety tools in this regard. I think that part of the reason I sometimes sense that that isn't offered up as an option is because I don't think employers want any of these tools to be questioned.

And at the end of the day, as we've seen with other legislation that's come before us, either in this or other committees, these tools and this oversight of workers, and workers recognize that we all recognize. When we go to work, we have cameras.

It's not like we are saying that we can never ever be under some kind of supervision or there aren't some tools that can help us do our job better no matter what the work is. That's where you sit down with workers, whether they're represented or not, and say, hey. How do we improve the quality of your work? Make it safer, make it more efficient.

But that's not what happens. And so we know what these tools are being used for and their surveillance is being used for because we see it happen all the time. We see it in these warehouses. We see it both in public and private sector employment all all too often.

And so I think that I would really just encourage folks that are opposed to come to the table and actually have the conversations where we can fine tune it as well as we possibly can so it's a product that works for everyone. But the underlying goal is absolutely necessary. And so I appreciate the author for bringing it forward.

Seeing no other questions or comments. Would you like to close?

Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I wanna start, I think, where my colleague left off and just let you and the committee know that folks have been coming to the table. We started those active conversations. There's a lot to get right in here, and the definitions really do matter.

Because I heard a lot that we actually do agree on right now, and I believe we have sincerity from a lot of our partners out there too that do share the value to make sure that we are not trying to irresponsibly, as a state, allow for the automation and subjugation of our workers who ultimately are gonna be subject to mass displacement.

We know that that is a real threat that might be the biggest multi generational shift in the labor force coming forward, and our diligence requires us now this year to be able to help provide some of those guardrails.

AB 2027 is a vehicle, maybe one of the primary vehicles, to be able to afford that. I think as this bill moves forward, a couple of things. One, on a lot of those definitions, we do wanna get that right because I think that we need to continue that conversation.

We're thinking about existing tools that are out there, whether email systems or existing technologies are there. I would argue and if it's a matter of refining some of that definition, hopefully, we can at least, you know, sort of check that one and get that one off of table because, of course, many of those tools aren't capable of actually replicating the job.

And so that probably is not the main issue that this bill if and as it continues to move forward is really gonna come to bear. Some of the other issues, yes, we are committed to work on definitions that, you know, define what is strictly necessary in terms of that relationship and other elements as well that were raised here today and also in the opposition's letter.

These are bonafide issues that we do wanna be able to get right. But what we're not gonna give ground on and what we are gonna hone on, hone in on is a fundamental philosophy of how we respect work and who is producing that work.

And that now that we have technology, in this case AI, coming into a system, you can't just drop as an employer an AI system in the workplace and have it just, like, pick up and start doing the work. It's stupid. It needs to be trained. It needs those inputs. But once it gets those inputs and starts to learn and correct, it becomes smart.

It becomes able and capable of maybe doing those jobs. Now some of those jobs, as we all probably would agree, can facilitate a healthy relationship. I can imagine a lot of employees would wanna be able to use the systems because, one, it probably makes their job more efficient. They probably get to slough off a lot of the boring stuff.

And they get to spend their time as an employee doing even more interesting and more advanced aspects of their job. A job for which they have trained themselves, they have committed themselves, they have dedicated themselves to be a part of the success of that profession, but ultimately the success of that company.

But if those inputs that are training this system to become smart are ultimately intended to be able to replace that job, well, I'm sorry, but that employee has agency over that work because it's his or... Excuse me. His or hers, or theirs, input created the intelligence to be able to perform that work.

And that means you just can't throw them out onto the street. They deep, because they have that agency, because they actually are now the lead agent providing that ongoing and cyclical work going forward right now, I believe they have some ownership over that. I think we should believe that as a state.

And so I think that's where we wanna make sure that as a principle, we are holding on to as this issue as this bill continues to move forward. And when we do so, we realize that the workforce is gonna be as best protected as it can be. And, hopefully, we can find what that synergistic relationship looks forward to in the workplace in the near future.

Because people are scared. And so I'm excited for the development of this bill I think because it can really set that standard not just to protect California workers, but hopefully a model for all workers in the country that we're gonna be grappling with the very same issue. And with that, I respectfully request your aye vote.

Thank you. And for those reasons, you have a strong aye. And we had a motion and a second. Secretary, please call the roll.

File item number 10, AB 2027, Ward. Motion is do pass and re-refer to Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection. [Roll Call]

That bill is out. We'll leave the roll open for absent Members. Thank you. We will now move to item eleven and twelve. Assembly Member Lee, whenever you are ready.

I'm gonna start with AB 2095, the Fair Chance Act. Thank you, Madam Chair and colleagues. I'm presenting AB 2095, which amends the Fair Chance Act. This act was passed in 2017, effective in 2018, building on prior Ban the Box legislation related to government employees.

As was well-described in the committee analysis, the Fair Chance Act and similar laws around the country are premised on the idea that a person's conviction history should not preclude them from getting a job if that history has nothing to do with the job duties.

When people have served their time, they should get a fair chance to be gainfully employed, earn a living, provide for their family, and contribute to their community. This is why 37 states and the federal government have Ban the Box laws for hiring.

The bill seeks to clarify how the act works and make some common-sense changes, like not requiring the job applicant to pay for the background check, clarifying that the act applies when a person is applying for a promotion or different job with the current employer, requiring that assessments that describe why conviction history is irrelevant to their job duties should be in writing, and not allowing prospective employers to induce an applicant to volunteer their own potential conviction history.

It It has been eight years since the Fair Chance Act was enacted, and this bill will close some gaps and clarify some processes so that basic idea of the Fair Chance Act can work better. With me today, I have Molly Lau with Legal Aid at Work and Nedrick Miller with Prisoners with Children.

Thank you, Assembly Member Lee. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. My name is Molly Lau. I'm a staff attorney with Legal Aid at Work, and I'm here in strong support of AB 2095. So as Assembly Member Lee said, California took an important step in 2018 when it enacted the Fair Chance Act, ensuring that people are judged first on their qualifications instead of their past by delaying background checks until the conditional job offer is given.

But today, too many qualified applicants are still being unfairly excluded from employment due to old or irrelevant conviction histories. Every day, I work with discouraged job applicants who have been denied jobs, oftentimes dozens of jobs, without any notice or explanation, and this is due to some of the issues that this bill aims to address. AB 2095 is necessary because it closes gaps that allow this discrimination to continue.

For example, it requires employers to show that a conviction is directly related to the job and not just use convictions as a blanket ban to deny someone work. It brings transparency to this hiring process by requiring employers to provide a job-related written explanation, and this explanation is already required under the original Fair Chance Act.

It just requires it to be written. And this bill recognizes a simple truth, and that is that people reentering society deserve a real second chance. Employment is one of the strongest predictors of successful reentry. When people can work, they support their families and communities and are far less likely to return to incarceration. But when barriers remain, we all pay the price through higher turnover and insufficient talent pools.

AB 2095 also supports workforce participation by removing unnecessary barriers for rehabilitated individuals. When more people access stable employment, communities benefit from increased economic stability. So we ask that if employers consider criminal history, the inquiry is one focused on fairness, accountability, and relevance, and that's the focus of AB 2095. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee. My name is Nedrick Miller, and I'm here on behalf of the Fair Chance Coalition, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, All of Us or None, and we stand in strong support of AB 2095. In 2022, I was working while attending Sacramento State University as a full-time student, and I was doing everything accordingly to build a better future for myself.

But these efforts were cut short by my employer's ignorance and stigma driven by stereotypes about people with records. One day, while working, it started like any other day. I was running my register, stocking goods, and helping customers. A new manager had recently transferred to the store, and we started talking. During lunch, we realized we have something in common. We both grew up in South Los Angeles. He asked me what brought me to Northern California.

In that moment, I chose to be honest. I shared my story, my past mistakes, the consequences, the work I had done to rebuild my life. What I didn't know was about a week later, the same manager ran my background check multiple times until he found a conviction from 1999. After that, he pushed HR to terminate me, saying he and other employees felt unsafe. When I came back to work after class, I was told that day that that would be my last.

He said HR overlooked my history, and now they were correcting it. The only thing they offered me, which was a gift, was a chance to finish out my final shift because I was a good employee. I was confused. I had worked there for nine months. I had done my job well. I had even been asked to step into a leadership role, and still my past outweighed everything I had done right.

Later, I learned through my employee email that my background check had been run repeatedly until they found the reason to let me go. My story is not unique. It reflects what so many people face after returning home. We are told to work hard, to change, to rebuild, but when we do, the same system blocks us from moving forward. We cannot say we believe in second chances while allowing people to be punished repeatedly for their past. AB 2095 is about making a fair chance-- making fair chance hiring real, and it closes the gaps that still allow this kind of discrimination to happen.

Thank you. Do we have additional witnesses in support?

Hi. I'm Sandra Johnson, and I'm here in support on behalf Legal Aid at Work and also on behalf of Western Center of Law and Poverty.

Thank you.

Mariko Yoshihara, on behalf of the California Coalition for Worker Power and the California Employment Lawyers Association, in support.

Sara Flocks, California Federation of Labor Unions, in support.

Jordan Uter, on behalf of Worksafe, in support.

Bernice Singh with All of Us or None, Sacramento, in support.

Marco Duncan, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. I support.

Sam Fishman, Legal Services of Prisoners with Children, proud co-sponsor. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any main witnesses in opposition?

Good afternoon. Andrea Lynch on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce in respectful opposition to SB 951. I wanna start, by saying that we believe that the Fair Chance Act is a great opportunity to provide meaningful employment opportunities to those who are formerly incarcerated or have convictions, and we support the framework of the Fair Chance Act. Our concerns lie with the expansion of the Fair Chance Act to create administrative burdens and conflicting regular for, regulatory framework within the existing Fair Chance Act.

Specifically, I want to draw your attention to three overarching issues.

One, the overly broad scope. Two, extensive note of requirement. And three, conflict with existing law. Sorry, give me just a moment.

First, AB 2095 establishes a presumption that a conviction is not sufficiently job related whenever an applicant has either completed a sentence or attained a license or credential. This approach not only prejudges the outcome of an individualized assessment, but also restricts an employer's ability to evaluate the specific risks associated with particular positions.

More concerning is the presumption that there is no nexus between a particular conviction or a job applies broadly regardless of the nature of the gravity of the underlying offense or the duties of the position, including role, roles that involve access to vulnerable populations, confidential information, or sensitive environments. In practice, this could create uncertainty for employers attempting to make good faith, safety based hiring decisions. Our second concern is the mandadar--, mandatory disclosure of individual assessments increasing, which increases litigation risk.

S AB 2095 would require employers to provide a written explanation of their reasoning. This could create an additional compliance burden and increase litigation or ease without improving applicant protections. Under the existing Fair Chance Act, employers are already required to conduct individualized assessments and provide written notice when making preliminary adverse decision based on conviction history.

Requiring employers to disclose the detailed reasoning underlying its decision, to not, is not only administrative burden, but also may compel employers to produce sensitive internal analysis that could be later used to challenge good faith hiring decisions. As I previously mentioned, existing law already provides applicants with meaningful notice and recourse to challenge preliminary hiring decisions.

For these and other reasons, we respectfully oppose AB 2095 and respectfully ask for your no vote.

Let's have adjustment. Sorry, madam chair. Chris McCauley here on behalf of SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, in respectful opposition, although we should probably stop using that since we are always respectful in our legislative proceedings. We were involved in the, some of the original legislation by former Assemblyman Dickinson on the Fair Chance Act and as Miss Lynch indicated, believe that it strikes the right balance, current law that is. We have three concerns.

The first is in the amendments to, 12952 C-6 on, the ability to suspend. It says for a reasonable amount of time, and that obviously doesn't have any specificity to it. So what is the meaning of reasonable amount? As Miss Lynch had indicated, I think we also share the concerns about not only the removal of some of the current exemptions in the sub in 12952, but also adding some additional requirements on exemptions in proposed subdivision D.

And the last item I'll highlight is in Subdivision E, allowing differences with local ordinances.

We think that the Fair Chance Act should be applied statewide and that we should not have differing local ordinances. With that, madam chair, we respectfully ask for a no vote. Thank you.

Do we have additional witnesses in opposition?

Good afternoon. Emily Doe with California's Credit Union, respectfully opposed.

Mark Farouk on behalf of the California Hospital Association, in opposition.

Seeing no other comments in opposition, turn it over to the dais. We have a motion and a second. Assemblymember Lackey?

Yeah. First off, I'd I'd just like to state a couple of things real quickly. I I completely support the energy behind the Fair Chance Act. But I do believe, as the opposition has indicated, that this takes a step to where it becomes too broad and that it's a case by case consideration on when it's more appropriate to move forward in this thing.

But what I find to be frustrating is even earlier today, we had a provision proposed that has gone by the letters GTFO, and that's get the federal people out of our, out of our society.

And I I find it hypocritical and a little bit frustrating that this legislature feels it's more hurtful to enforce the law than to break it. And that's exactly the mood that exists right now, and I don't understand it. But nonetheless, I'm sorry that I won't be able to support this.

I want to commend and thank the author for taking a deep dive onto this, because, and I particularly want to thank your your witness for being here to present, there's probably no more powerful testimony than a personal story that, demonstrates how the Fair Chance Act is not giving you a fair chance that you deserved and that, that is beyond disrespectful, incredibly hurtful.

And we deserve to be able to relook at this and look for improvements that are gonna make sure that so many like you as well are given the support, beyond support, or or or given the equality that we are we are seeking here to make sure, that that your future is successful. And I think that what I'm hearing is, hopefully, a lot of issues on definitional issues that possibly I know the author would be, continue to be, committed to be able to work on.

But clearly, there is room for improvement, and I think the structure here is really great to be able to move forward.

I'm happy to support the bill here today as well.

Thank you. Seeing no other comments, Assemblymember Lee, would you like to close?

Yes. I'll acknowledge there's always room for improvement in the bill, so I look forward to further discussions about this. But, you know, much of the arguments provided today against the bill is the same kind of arguments provided against the Fair Chance Act the first time in 2017. And that's what this is about, giving people a fair chance. Fair chance to get a job, to pay their rent, and to feed their families.

And this is about making sure that Californians recognize that you are more than just your criminal history, more than just a conviction, and that people ought to have a job. I mean, that fundamental thing is, the reality is people that exit our carceral system, they have to live somehow. And if we don't, aren't calling for universal basic income or something, then they need to get a job.

And I think it's fair that people get their own careers and figure it out and ask that you respectfully vote aye on this bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Secretary, we have a motion and a second. Please call the roll.

File item number 11, AB2095 Lee. Motion is due passed and we refer to Committee on Judiciary. [Roll Call].

That bill is out. We'll keep the roll open for absent members. Thank you.

Alright, I have one more bill. This one will be AB 2653.

No, no you're not.

It's always cold in here. Alright.

With everyone here, let's can we do a a call for the consent calendar? Motion and second. Secretary, please call the roll on consent.

File item number one, AB 1961 Ahrens. Motion is due passed and we refer to committee on Judiciary with the recommendation to the consent calendar. [Roll Call]

Consent calendar is out.

I have one more.

Okay. Oh, one more.

File item number three, AB2150, Haney. Motion is due passed and we refer to committee on appropriations with the recommendation to the consent calendar. [Roll Call]

Consent calendar is out. We will now move to our final two bills by me. Assembly Member Lackey?

You may proceed.

Thank you. Assembly member, I will now present AB 2321. Good afternoon, chair and members. Cal OSHA is broken, and I'm tired of excuses. So are the widows and families of the three men who died on the job in my district at Alco Iron and Metals.

Their names were Ray Alfaro, Alberto Anaya, and Luis Fernando Guerrero. But this isn't just in my district. This is all about all of your districts. Cases are not being investigated. Employers know that they aren't going to be held accountable.

This was made clear and documented in the audit of Cal OSHA that I requested. You've all seen the hearing and you've heard of the findings. In the last five years, over 8,000 fines were reduced by an average of more than half. 82% of so called out OSHA investigations are I call fake because they just sent a letter. CalOSHA Bureau of Investigation or BOI, which is responsible for reviewing and investigating fatalities of serious cases, isn't getting the job done.

The audit showed that they referred just one point seven percent of serious cases for criminal prosecution. In California, you basically have to die at work for the BOI to investigate your case. But even then, your case may go unaddressed. In the audit hearing, I asked Cal OSHA, when do you decide to investigate a workplace for serious safety issues or death? Is it after the first death?

Is it after the second death? Or is it after the third death? They didn't have an answer. So, I am here presenting AB 2321 to provide them some assistance. Because, like I said at the beginning, I'm tired of excuses.

And I'm tired of hearing their response from that department that they're just short staffed. And that's been happening for decades. Upon appropriation, what AB 2321 will do is empower public prosecutors to investigate cases where there is a fatality or permanent disability. This is an approach the legislature has had success with for wage and hour cases. It will authorize the state legislature to appropriate existing funds from the occupational safety and health fund for the labor and workforce development fund that are currently going unused.

The auditor found that this fund had a balance of over $200,000,000 as of 2024. AB 2321 will require BOI to establish written policies and procedures for the process of reviewing cases and deciding whether to investigate or refer them for prosecution, following recommendations made by the auditor. What this bill will not do is wait waste state resources. The funding for the bill comes from a pool of money that is currently going unused.

This is money that could be going to save lives, but is now being what is now being wasted, gathering dust while workers die on the job.

Another argument I've heard is that the BOI has hired more staff and is now up to 11 investigators. They've gone from one to 11. I would like for them to tell the widow that I sat with who carries the death of her husband on her cell phone and tell her that 11 investigators is now acceptable in the state of California. So with that, I wanna introduce, my witness who is here, Sarah Flock with the California Federation of Labor.

Mister vice chair, members of the committee, Sarah Flocks, California Federation of Labor Unions. California has some of the strongest health and safety and labor laws in the country, but they are meaningless unless we have robust enforcement. And this bill is building on a model that exists and works. That until CalOSHA is fully staffed and has the procedures to enforce the law, we need to find other avenues for the laws to be enforced.

This focuses on the most egregious and criminal violations of the law, to be clear.

And so what it does is it allows public prosecutors at the local level to pursue these cases after investigations have been done, after citations have been made. And we know that this works. This has been in place for enforcement of labor law and has been used by city attorneys. And then actually assembly member Ward, carried a bill a couple years ago that expanded a small part of the labor code covering live events, for health and safety to public prosecutors as well.

This is also very smart because it is paired with a budget appropriation.

This is upon appropriation when these departments are fully funded and able to take on these cases. What we hope is that public prosecutors will go after the biggest bad actors, sending a chill and a message through the industry that health and safety laws matter. The lives of workers matter to the state of California, and these laws will be enforced. So we urge your support and thank the author for bringing this forward.

I also have with me Erin Hickey for any technical questions that you may have.

I'm sorry. I missed that.

Oh, I just have Aaron here with me in case you anyone has any technical questions.

Okay. Very, very good. Okay. Do we have, anybody who would like to express their support for this measure? Please come forward, identify yourself.

Catherine Vieira Houston, United Steelworkers District 12 in support.

Thank you. Do you have any formal opposition that would like to present?

Thank you, mister chair and madam chair and members. Robert Wintour, California Chamber of Commerce. I'll be trying to be as brief as possible. It was at the audit presentation with the member. Obviously, cannot speak for the failures of CalOcean, which was their enforcement, and I've had I will say member companies complained to me that they will show up to settlement conferences in cases, unready, you know, to discuss cases.

So I can't speak to those issues. Our concern here is not, you know, around, you know, their staffing issue. It's focused on a kind of one specific portion of the bill, not the crafting of regulations around cases, but specifically the, automatic forwarding of certain cases to criminal prosecutors. You know, we don't think that is the best step forward. My my twin brother is a prosecutor, and I will tell you he's always underwater and not getting to cases.

That's a whole different budget issue. But so we don't see that as an improvement to the workflow. And second, having spoken to defense attorneys in the space, they've told me that oftentimes when they do work with prosecutors, they are slower because they don't know workplace safety as well. So our concerns come from that portion, but sympathetic to the concerns raised by the author on staffing and can't speak to those really.

Thank you. Do you have any other persons who would like to express opposition? Seeing none, we'll go back to the dais. Anybody have any remarks?

I have questions. We already have a motion. I I would just say that we we know that the the state doesn't have enough resources. And so going to public prosecutors, especially those counties that have shown a willingness and and helping to fund them through an existing fund that has resources makes the most sense to me if we actually care about cracking down on this conduct. I really don't think the employers are worried about the workload of public prosecutors.

I think they're worried about actually being prosecuted. And so I fully support this and and thank the chair for bringing it forward. Thank you.

I also wanna Go ahead.

Oh, thank you. I also wanna thank the author for bringing this bill. I would love to be joined as coauthor as possible. But I do think this is important. In a similar call where I supposed to.

But I think this is also in keeping with if OSHA our OSHA is not willing to fill their responsibility, then just like many local prosecutors who are also going after a wage theft and also other unsafe environments, then we should also allow more people, more prosecutors to fulfill the law. If they're breaking the law criminally, then they ought to be held responsible. So local prosecutors also make sense. So I am happy to support this bill. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Madam, you may close.

I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

K. We have a first and second. Correct? Or do we not? I don't think we do.

No. We have a First, second, and a third.

Yes.

Yes. Well, that's right. We did. We had a flurry that going on there. Okay.

Then go ahead and call for the role, please.

File item number 13AB2321Ortega. Motion is do passed and we refer to committee on appropriations. Ortega?

Ortega, aye. Lackey?

Aye.

Not voting.

Lackey not voting. Chen? No. Chen not voting. Elhawary?

Aye.

Elhawary, aye. Kalra?

Aye.

Kalra, aye. Lee? Aye. Lee, aye. Ward?

Aye. Ward, aye.

Measure passed.

Thank you.

Ready for your next one? Yes.

I will now present AB 2575. Thank you, chair and members, for the opportunity to present AB 2575. This is also a triple referral, so I'm in that club with you guys. AB 2575 is built around a simple principle. In healthcare, artificial intelligence should only support clinical judgment, not replace it.

AI may offer promise, but in real world settings, these tools can still get it wrong. They can generate false alarms and miss serious conditions. AI can also reflect the same bias that already exists in data they were trained on. Knowing these faults, our frontline healthcare workers find themselves in an impossible double bind. Their employers are using these tools and making workers follow the output.

But if the AI is wrong and the patient is harmed, it is the workers and not the AI who face liability. Follow the machine, get blamed, override the machine, risk retaliation. When an AI tool goes awry because of the developers or an employer's failure to develop safeguard, someone can try to hold them liable. But developers and employers can use a legal loophole called superseding clause by pointing the finger at health care workers and failing to catch the AI's mistake.

When they win using this loophole, they face zero liability even if their negligence caused harm.

To address this, AB 2702575 has three key provisions. First, the bill prohibits employers from retaliating against a health care worker for using their professional judgment to either override or follow an AI recommendation. Second, the bill requires AI tools to carry a nutrition's facts label that lets health care workers know the risk and intended uses of the tools they use.

Third, it prevents a developer or employer from using this superseding clause loophole to ship blame to healthcare workers and avoid liability for their mistakes made in patient care. The purpose of AB 2575 is not to stifle innovation.

We know that it's being used. We know that it's an everyday where some of us use it here whenever we have a cold and we wanna find out what's happening. So it's not the goal of this bill to stop that. The goal of this bill is for accountability, transparency, and patient safety. When human lives are at risk, human healthcare professionals should be the ultimate decision makers, not AI.

Here and to testify in support are Diane, California Nurses Association, Diane McClure, and Sarah Flock from the California Labor Federation.

Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Diane McClure. I'm a registered nurse and board member of the California Nurses Association. This bill addresses a reality many nurses and other health care workers are confronting today. Our employers are telling us we must use AI systems without basic information about these tools and without clear protections to avoid to object to and override them without fear of retaliation.

As nurses, we ask, what is the tool doing? What data is it using? What are its risks and limitations, and is it working? But we aren't getting any answers. When employers expect nurses to rely on technology that we cannot meaningfully evaluate, object to, or override, our patient's safety is at risk.

After more than thirty five years as a registered nurse, I know that safe patient care is never just about what is on a screen or in a chart. Patient care is about understanding the human being in front of us through assessment, listening, observation, and evaluation. For example, in the emergency department, an AI triage tool might estimate a patient's severity of illness and assign the patient a low priority score based on the information entered into the system when they are when they walked in the door.

But a patient's conditions may change. A triage nurse may look, touch, or even smell a patient and immediately know something is off.

Maybe they're pale or their skin is cool to the touch. They're barely holding themselves upright or minimizing symptoms because they're scared. The nurse knows through her professional judgment that the patient needs care sooner than the AI tool predicted. Using our judgment as nurses, we must be able to care for our patients without being pressured by our employer to defer to a machine. And hospitals and tech developers should not be able to escape responsibility for unsafe AI systems just because a clinician is somewhere in the loop.

This is not really a debate about technology. Nurses simply want to ensure that we can still question, intervene, and protect our patients when there's something wrong with the tools our employers are asking us to use in patient care. I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. You may proceed.

Mister chair, members, Sarah Flocks of California Federation of Labor Unions, and we're proud to cosponsor this bill that's part of our AI package. And I wanna start with the opposition coalition letter, because one of the lines that they wrote was that we have a shared obligation and commitment to ensure that these AI tools are developed and deployed responsibly, equitably, and transparently.

Well, that is great because what AB 2575 does is codify the guardrails that are necessary to make sure that AI tools meet those lofty goals. It is not enough to have a commitment and an obligation on the part of an employer. You have to have laws in place to make sure that humans are in command.

It's not enough to have them in the loop, not when you have massive amounts of data filled, put into a black box algorithm that's spitting out an output to a nurse or a health care worker that already has a 100 other things going on. You need to have the the conditions to make sure that human is in command.

That includes transparency, and that includes what's most important for labor committee is what's in the labor code, which is protection from retaliation and discipline, the freedom to make decisions to override or to follow this machine that your employer purchased. And so we think this is a very common sense bill. It's a model for other industries, and we urge your support.

Thank you very much. Is there anybody else who would like to come and express your support for this measure? Please state your name, organization, and your position.

Thank you, mister vice chair and members. JB Hannah on behalf of the California Nurses Association. Proud to sponsor this measure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Catherine Veira Houston, United Steelworkers District 12, and strong support. Thank you.

Oak Wallen, registered nurse with California Nurses Association, and I support.

Jane Churchon, registered nurse, California Nurses Association in support.

Judy Yee, State Bill and Trade support.

Carlos Lopez, California School Employees Association in support.

Good afternoon. Jennifer Robles with Health Access California, also on behalf of Western Center Long Poverty in support.

Shanna Somali, AFSCME California in support. Thank you.

Megan Abel, Tech Equity Action in support.

K. Thank you very much. Opposition, do we have any, formal opposition? Please come forward. State your position.

You each have two minutes.

Yeah. Thank you, chair and members. Alexis Rodriguez here with the California Chamber of Commerce, in opposition to AB 2575. AB 2575 seeks to impose numerous notification and disclosure requirements on health care facilities using AI tools and systems. This bill will negatively impact these tools that are already safely and effectively used in health care every day.

AI tools and systems have the ability to improve the early detection of life threatening conditions. AI is already helping Clinicians detect sepsis sooner, improve their accuracy for of cancer screenings,

assist with screening patients' medication orders, screening patients' medication orders, and more. To be clear, Cal Chamber believes AI in health care should not replace providers. It is there to support them in the practice of medicine. Medical professionals can and should use their professional judgment when using AI tools. With that said, AB 2575 would impose liability on health care entities and AI developers whenever there is harm resulting from use a professional using an AI tool.

If a patient is harmed, there should be a thorough investigation on who or which tool is at is truly at fault. Strips liability on the health care facility and developer will only discourage the use of AI in health care and dissuade innovation and creative tools, in the future. We share the goal of responsible AI use in health care, but unfortunately, AB 2575 only moves us in the wrong direction. For those reasons, we respectfully urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you. You may proceed, sir.

Good afternoon, chair and members. Mark Farouk on behalf of the California Hospital Association representing nearly 400 hospitals and health systems. I wanna start off by saying, we are opposed AB 2575, but wanna start off by saying that California's hospitals and health systems stand by the responsible deployment of artificial intelligence tools to assist, not replace medical professionals and improve patient outcomes through improved detection and screening. Our members maintain detailed governance frameworks, risk assessments, and oversight of AI technology that is used in their facilities.

AI is assisting in saving lives and improving patient outcomes while also removing some of the administrative burdens from health professionals.

Even with the proposed amendments that are outlining the analysis, significant issues remain. The overly broad definition of covered tool includes not only artificial intelligence, but also clinical decision support systems, which will sweep in technologies that have been around for decades. I just wanna note that health care providers in California are required to comply with something known as the data exchange framework to ensure the sharing of medical records across different health systems so that patients can access those records.

This is enabled through electronic health electronic medical record platforms. Those platforms have this technology embedded.

The provisions of this bill will make it extremely difficult to maintain those systems and to be able to comply with existing law related to the data exchange framework. Additionally, the re the multiple disclosures still required in the bill even with the amendments include 12 separate data points that go far beyond even the requirements that the FDA has for approving new medical technology. Additionally, the bill requires disclosures of data that providers may not even have available.

Finally, we are concerned that the bill creates a strict liability standard on the developer and the facility for harm ultimately caused by an individual overriding the system. By doing so, the bill is empowering individuals to override a outputs, absolving them from any accountability if their independent judgment caused the harm to the patient.

There is no mechanism for evaluating whether an override itself was reasonable. Again, for these reasons, we are opposed, but just would like to finish off by saying, we use AI to assist medical professionals, not replace their judgment. Thank you.

K. Anybody else who would like to express their opposition, please come forward, and you know the rules.

George Sorey with the California Medical Association in opposition.

Mister chair, Chris McKinley on behalf of the Civil Justice Association of California in opposition. Thank you.

Mister chair and members, MJ Diaz on behalf of Kaiser Permanente in opposition.

John Winger on behalf of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, AviMed in opposition.

Chair members, Luis Sanchez on behalf of the California Association of Health Plans in opposition.

Thank you, chair and members. Ryan Perini on behalf of AT Action, the advocacy arm of the American Telemedicine Association in Opposition. Thank you.

Chair and committee members, Gilbert Lara with BioCom in Opposition.

Good afternoon. Zoe Johnson on behalf of California Life Sciences in opposition.

Good afternoon, chair members. Jose Torres with TechNet in opposition.

Bring it back to the dais. Any comments, questions, motions? First and second. No other comments, questions? Senate member, you may close.

I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Okay. Madam secretary, I think we're ready.

File item number 14AB2575 Ortega.

Aye.

Motion is do passed and we refer to committee on privacy and consumer protections. Ortega? Aye. Ortega, aye. Lackey?

Sorry. No.

Lackey, no. Chen? Chen, no. Elhawary? Aye.

Elhawary, aye. Kalra? Aye. Kalra Aye, Lee? Aye.

Lee, Aye, Ward? Ward, Aye.

Measure passes. And before we move too deeply, I'd like to do a vote change. Maybe twenty five eleven. And I'll and I'll tell I know how to announce it. Yeah.

I'd like to do a vote change, AB 2511, not voting to no.

Okay. Lackey, not voting to no.

Thank you.

File item number eight. We have a motion. And a second. Secretary, please call the roll.

Filed item number eight, AB 1697, Kalra. Motion is due pass as amended and we refer to Committee on Appropriations. [Roll Call].

That bill is out.

Okay. File item number two, AB 2511, Ahrens. Motion is due pass and we refer to Committee on Health. [Roll Call].

Bill is out.

File item number four, AB 2157, Connolly. Motion is due pass, and we refer to Committee on Appropriations. [Roll Call].

That bill is out.

File item number five, AB 2488, Schiavo. Motion is due pass and we refer to Committee on Appropriations. [Roll Call].

That bill is out.

File item number six, AB 2545, Schiavo. Motion is due pass and we refer to Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection. [Roll Call].