Nallely Camacho hasn’t worked since March, and doesn’t know when she will again.
Laid off from her job as a breakfast attendant at the Hyatt House hotel in Emeryville at the outset of the pandemic, Camacho, a single mom, is increasingly desperate to get her old union job back to support her two kids. She had hoped a bill, AB3216, would help her do that.
Gov. Gavin Newsom dashed her and others’ hopes when he vetoed the bill Wednesday, saying the Legislature should “consider other approaches” to solving the problems of workers like Camacho.
The bill would have created “return to work” rights for some laid-off workers in industries hit hardest by the pandemic including hospitality, event centers, airports, building services and others.
As those businesses looked to rehire staff, they would have been required to start with rehiring those they laid off. If the firms hired a different worker for a restored role, they would have been obligated to provide the laid-off worker with the name of the person who filled their job and the reason for the hire. Newsom said in a letter to the Legislature rejecting the bill that latter requirement in particular risked “the sharing of too much personal information.”
The bill saw opposition from the state business establishment, including the California Chamber of Commerce which called it a “job killer” that would have placed restrictions on businesses still emerging from the deep freeze of the ongoing pandemic.
“It is critical to remember that many businesses and their owners are themselves casualties of this economic shutdown,” a group of California businesses and associations along with the Chamber wrote in an August letter.
Newsom concurred, writing that the bill would have placed “too onerous a burden” on employers emerging from the recession.
The business group’s letter also raised concerns that the language of the bill would have force employers to offer “almost any position to employees by order of seniority,” during a state of emergency around the virus that could go on indefinitely.
Some workers will nevertheless retain protections under similar ordinances in cities and localities across the Bay Area.
In July, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a temporary ordinance granting a right of reemployment to laid-off workers in certain industries, but that measure expired this month.
Oakland passed a reemployment measure over the summer, similar to an existing Los Angeles ordinance, covering employers in the airport hospitality, restaurant, events, and other industries.
Some unions, including Unite Here Local 2850 of which Camacho is a member, advocated strongly for the bill, organizing caravans of members from the Bay Area to Sacramento to ask Newsom to sign the bill.
Ty Hudson, a spokesperson for Unite Here, said the legislation would have benefited union and nonunion workers alike employed in the same industries and that wages and benefits for rehired union workers would largely depend on existing contracts, unless they were renegotiated.
“Most of those people are at risk ... of never going back to their old jobs,” Hudson said.
Hudson said it is more urgent now to give laid off workers a better shot at working again in light of expanded federal unemployment benefits expiring over the summer.
Since mid-March the state Employment Development Department has processed more than 11 million applications for unemployment assistance, underscoring the massive layoffs that have roiled the state.
For Camacho, the former Hyatt employee, waiting and relying on unemployment benefits is not an option. She is a single mother with two children to care for. She said she is looking for a job working nights as a cleaner or shelf stocker that will allow her to spend time during the day with her children to help with their virtual schooling.
“I’m not the only one in this situation,” she said. “It’s hard for everybody to not know if they can go back to their job.”
Chase DiFeliciantonio is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice
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October 01, 2020 at 10:54AM
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Gov. Newsom rejects California return-to-work bill - San Francisco Chronicle
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