Farm Bureau at work California Farm Bureau’s government affairs team is at the Capitol, advocating for farmers, ranchers and agriculture’s future. Here are some key issues Farm Bureau is focused on this week.
Agricultural Employment Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed Senate Bill 799, which would have permitted em- ployees participating in a “trade dispute,” or a strike, to collect unemployment insur- ance benefits. The California Farm Bureau opposed the bill and urged the governor to veto the
legislation, which was introduced by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank. Unemployment insurance benefits are provided under federal law, which created federal-state partnership funding and a framework for administering benefits and providing for the operations of state job service agencies, including California’s
Employment Development Department. However, federal law specifies that in- dividuals may not collect unemployment insurance benefits if they are not available for work and ready and willing to accept offered work. That is clearly not the case with striking employees who elect to withhold their la-
bor to gain economic leverage over their employer during a work stoppage. On another workplace legislative front, Gov. Newsom signed Senate Bill 616, by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach. The bill, also opposed by Farm Bureau, will now increase mandated statewide paid sick leave to five days or 40 hours. The previous paid sick leave standard, established under Assembly Bill 1522 in 2013, mandated an employer-covered leave of three days or 24 hours. No provision was offered in SB 616 to al- low employers to manage misuse of paid sick leave. The legislation does not require any written verification that paid sick leave is being appropriately used for its intended purpose instead of other uses. Taxation Senate Bill 264, authored by state Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, and supported by the California Farm Bureau, was signed into law by Gov. Newsom. The legislation extends the sunset date by five years—to Jan. 1, 2029—for claiming California’s disaster loss tax deduction. The deduction provides for automatic disaster loss relief for any disaster occurring in a city or county that is proclaimed by the governor to be in a state of emergency. The bill passed with unanimous support The California Wildfire and Forest Health Taskforce held a two-day meeting at Shasta College last week to discuss prog- ress on implementing wildfire mitigation strategies across the state. Meeting ses- sions covered forest landscape restoration, watersheds and water-security issues as well as forestry workforce matters. in the state Assembly and Senate. Forestry and Wildfire The event included field tours in for- est areas, including where the Northwest Gateway project seeks to reduce forest density through one-time use of mech- anized equipment and then prescribed fires three to five years after the mechani- cal treatments. The Shasta College Heavy Equipment Logging Operations program, Cal Fire and the University of Nevada, Reno, led a tour of the LaTour Demonstration State Forest. Sierra Pacific Industries and Shasta Sustainable Resource Management host- ed a tour of Sierra Pacific’s log mill and offered insights on how the innovative technology is being applied to maximize lumber production and minimize wood waste in support of sustainable forest management practices. The McConnell Foundation hosted a tour of Ross Ranch, an 860-acre working ranch near Redding that has been protected un- der a conservation easement and is used for fire-resilience demonstration projects. Notably, Cal Fire shared that this fire season has been devoid of a massive com- plex fire as seen in recent years. The Wildfire and Forest Health Taskforce’s progress can be tracked at https://wildfiretaskforce.org.
14 Ag Alert October 11, 2023
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