Start now! 

That is the emphatic advice given by one of the more highly respected labor and employment attorneys in California on the latest NFIB California Podcast, regarding a new law requiring employers to implement workplace-violence-prevention programs. 

The law takes effect July 1, but special guest Ben Ebbink suggests small business owners waste no time in learning about the compliance burden facing them. Ebbink called the new law “a pretty onerous set of requirements. I am encouraging everyone to start now though. This is not something a few days before July 1, you can print out something and you’re good. You really have to spend some time … identifying potential hazards and how you’re going to respond.” 

Ebbink is a partner in the Sacramento office of Fisher & Phillips LLP and legislative advocate and principal of FP Advocacy LLC.  He brings more than two decades of experience in labor and employment law to the firms he counsels, including 15 years as chief consultant to the California Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment.  

Another three laws taking effect don’t wait until mid-year. They begin on January 1. In conversation with NFIB California Legislative Director Tim Taylor, Ebbink describes the compliance difficulties with each. 

“The largest bill that’s going to have the most impact on small business,” is how Ebbink described Senate Bill 616, which increases the number of paid sick days from three to five.  

“A business with a couple of hundred employees, to have an employee out sick, it’s generally easy to absorb that … when you’re talking about small employers, having people out on leave is a hardship.” 

California is no slouch on paid leave requirements, according to Ebbink. In fact, it might lead the nation. “The last time I looked, I think there were upwards of close to 30 different types of leave. We have leave for bone marrow transplant, organ donation, civil air patrol. You name it, there’s a leave that’s protected in California.” 

Speaking of leave laws, Senate Bill 848, dealing with reproductive loss, was also brought up in the podcast. An interesting component of the new law is that an employee would not have had to be on the job for years, just 30 days of employment will do. 

On new protections for cannabis users, Assembly Bill 2188, which passed during the 2021-2022 session of the Legislature, but is taking effect in 2024, Ebbink said, “If anyone out there can invent a simple, cost-effective impairment test, you’d be a billionaire. More power to you, but I just don’t think we’re there yet, so in the meantime, you’re going to be left making judgment calls of how to measure it from appearance to other functions,” which Ebbink included such things as smell, bloody eyes, slurring.”  

Click the arrow below to listen to the interview with Ben Ebbink, and click here for a list of all past NFIB California Podcasts.