Assembly Standing Committee on Labor and Employment

Welcome to the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee Hearing. Secretary, please call the roll to establish quorum.

[roll call]

Quorum is established. As soon as the Author Muratsuchi is able to present a B605, we will get going.

Assemblymember Muratsuchi, whenever you are ready to present AB 605.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Is your mic on? I'm sorry.

Which one?

Oh. Go ahead.

Hello? Okay.

Here we go. Sorry.

Oh, okay. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. To support what's been mentioned, what happened with Phillips sixty six and Carson in Wilmington last year is the second occasion where we've had a closure, and there's been extreme work hours put in by the people that remained until the closure. We have a special schedule called a turnaround schedule that comes into play when we have a big maintenance event going on.

And that schedule calls out for thirteen days on, one day off, and then you're back on again for another thirteen days.

And we'll work that schedule to handle these maintenance events maybe five or six weeks. But what's happened is once the closure announcement is made and people leave, we have a reduced workforce trying to cover for everybody that was once there. And so now they're working that turnaround schedule five, six, seven months in a row. So that's 26 out of every 27 days.

And there are charts out there, and some of them will have this information in your offices that shows not just hours at work, but it covers the wakefulness of a day that that equates to a blood alcohol level.

Seventeen hours. And this is from NIOSH, National Institute of Safety and Health, their numbers, and then also the nurses. But being up for seventeen hours equates to a point o five blood alcohol limit, and it gets worse from there as you move into eighteen, nineteen hours. So we've had folks that have worked a sixteen hour shift. They live an hour away.

So now we're up to eighteen hours for that day. You don't go straight to bed when you get home. And when you do go to bed, you don't fall right off to sleep. And so this is the workforce that's working at these facilities once the closure announcement is made. And it's not safe for the workers.

It's not safe for the community. And even the idea of the facility being sold later on, if a big enough event happens, it's not good for the stakeholders as well. So we would ask for an aye vote for a task force to look at this so that we can maintain staffing till a a facility is safely closed.

Thank you. Do we have any witnesses in support? Seeing none, do we have additional witnesses and main witnesses in opposition? Seeing none, turning it over to the dais for questions, comments. Would you like to close?

Thank you. I I just want to emphasize not only the the reality that Mister Rogers described at the Phillips sixty six refinery in terms of, you know, the the predictable and and natural, challenges of, refineries announcing that they're closing, that they start leaving the, the refinery, but also the the importance of keeping our refineries safe. I I know that we've seen a number of refineries throughout the state that have had extremely dangerous situations including explosions.

And I lived just a couple of miles away from the Torrance Refinery in 2015 when there was a major explosion there. And and so all of these are are reasons why we ask that you support this this measure. Thank you.

Seeing no other, we've secretary, can we have a motion and a second? Can you please call the roll?

[Roll Call]

We will leave the roll open for absent members. Thank you. Thank you. We will continue to leave the roll open for absent members.

[Roll Call]

We will continue to leave the roll open for our absent members. ... was an aye. We will continue to leave the role open for absent members. AB 605 is now out with four ayes..

I also wanna thank Assemblymember Muratsuchi. He's no longer here, but I understand that this is his last bill that he was presenting. So I wanna thank him for all his years of service and bringing us his last, bill. With that, I see no other further business. We are now adjourned.