BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 2025|
|Office of Senate Floor Analyses | |
|(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | |
|327-4478 | |
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 2025
Author: Gonzalez (D), et al.
Amended: 8/16/16 in Senate
Vote: 21
SENATE BUS., PROF. & ECON. DEV. COMMITTEE: 8-0, 6/13/16
AYES: Hill, Bates, Block, Gaines, Galgiani, Jackson, Mendoza,
Wieckowski
NO VOTE RECORDED: Hernandez
SENATE LABOR & IND. REL. COMMITTEE: 5-0, 6/29/16
AYES: Mendoza, Stone, Jackson, Leno, Mitchell
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 8/11/16
AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, McGuire, Mendoza, Nielsen
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 69-3, 5/19/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Barbering and cosmetology: labor law education
requirements
SOURCE: California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative
DIGEST: This bill updates the Barbering and Cosmetology Act
(Act) to ensure that the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology
(BBC) offers all written materials provided to licensees and
applicants in English, Spanish and Vietnamese; that the BBC
provides practitioner and establishment applicants with
information about basic labor laws and; that the BBC includes
basic labor law information in health and safety curriculum
taught in BBC-approved schools.
AB 2025
Page 2
Senate Floor Amendments of 8/16/16 delay implementation of the
measure until July 2017, add Korean to the list of languages BBC
must make written materials available in and make other
technical and conforming changes.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Defines "establishment" as any premises, building or part of a
building where any activity licensed under the Act is
practiced and sets forth requirements for licensure as an
establishment by BBC. (Business and Professions Code (BPC) §§
7346-7352)
2)Establishes the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act
(Dymally-Alatorre) which requires each state agency to conduct
a survey, related to its bilingual services, of each of its
statewide offices which render services to the public every
two years to determine specified information. (Government
Code Section 7290 et seq.)
3)Establishes the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE)
and grants the Chief of DLSE (Labor Commissioner) and his or
her employee's free access to all places of labor. (Labor
(LAB) Code §§ 83 and 90)
4)States the policy of this state to vigorously enforce minimum
labor standards in order to ensure employees are not required
or permitted to work under substandard unlawful conditions or
for employers that have not secured the payment of
compensation, and to protect employers who comply with the law
from those who attempt to gain a competitive advantage at the
expense of their workers by failing to comply with minimum
labor standards. Requires the Labor Commissioner to adopt an
enforcement plan for the field enforcement unit which shall
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Page 3
identify priorities for investigations to be undertaken by the
unit that ensure the available resources will be concentrated
in industries, occupations, and areas in which employees are
relatively low paid and unskilled, and those in which there
has been a history of violations and those with high rates of
noncompliance with the law. (LAB § 90.5)
5)Requires, at the time of hiring, an employer to provide each
employee a written notice, in the language the employer
normally uses to communicate employment-related information to
the employee, containing information about the rate or rates
of pay. (LAB § 2810.5)
This bill:
1)Requires, beginning July 1, 2017, BBC to offer and make
available all written materials provided to licensees and
applicants in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean.
2)Expands the role of the BBC Health and Safety Advisory
Committee to require recommendations be provided on issues
impacting board licensees, including how to ensure licensees
are aware of basic labor laws (BLLs) including, but not
limited to key differences between the legal rights, benefits,
and obligations of an employee and an independent contractor;
wage and hour rights for hourly employees; antidiscrimination
laws relating to the use of a particular language in the
workplace; anti-retaliation laws relating to a worker's right
to file complaints with the Department of Industrial Relations
and; how to obtain more information about state and federal
labor law.
3)Requires every electronic application to renew a license to
include a signed acknowledgment that the renewal applicant
understands that establishments are responsible for compliance
with any applicable labor laws of the state and that the
applicant understands the informational materials BLLs.
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Page 4
Background
Concerns about nail salons and experiences of nail salon
employees. Nail salons have been the focus of studies and media
reports in recent years stemming from health, safety and labor
concerns in these settings. In May 2015, the New York Times
(NYT) published two articles stemming from interviews with more
than 150 nail salon workers and owners that found that a cast
majority of workers are paid below minimum wage and are
sometimes not even paid. The articles found that workers
"endure all manner of humiliation, including having their tips
docked as punishment for minor transgressions, constant video
monitoring by owners, even physical abuse." The NYT also found
that employers are rarely punished for labor and other
violations and that in 2014, when the New York State Labor
Department conducted its first nail salon sweep, investigators
inspected 29 salons and found 116 wage violations. While only
about a quarter of the more than 100 workers said they were paid
an amount equivalent to that state's minimum hourly wage, all
but three said they had wages withheld in ways considered
illegal, such as never getting overtime and many were unaware
that working unpaid was against the law and their alarmingly low
wages are also illegal.
A February 2016 follow up report in the NYT articles found that
40 percent of the salons inspected, as part of the Labor
Department's increased efforts to inspect following the original
May articles, had underpaid employees, including one worker at a
Manhattan salon who was paid $30 a day for 10-hour shifts, a
manicurist in Queens who was paid only $200 for a 50-hour
workweek, had manicurists at seven salons who were forced to
work for no pay or had to pay salon owners a fee, ostensibly to
learn the trade and several owners admitted to submitting fake
payroll records in an effort to fool investigators. The article
highlighted that employers are often unfamiliar with the
intricacies of state labor laws.
On August 26, 2015, the Assembly Select Committee on Women in
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the Workplace, the Assembly Select Committee on Girls and Women
of Color, and the Assembly Committees on Health, Business and
Professions, and Labor held a joint informational hearing titled
"Labor Practices, Health, and Safety in California Nail Salons."
The purpose of the hearing was to obtain information, address
concerns, and discuss policy recommendations regarding nail
salon practices from state agencies, advocates, and industry.
The Author notes that the most widely agreed-upon problem
discussed at the hearing was lack of information about worker
rights. According to the Author, this lack of information,
combined with cultural and language barriers, has led to some
nail salon owners using illegal practices to manage workers.
These practices include employee/contractor misclassification,
daily pay totaling less than minimum wage, unpaid overtime,
withholding tips or deducting pay as retaliation, denying meal
breaks, and language discrimination. The Author states that it
is clear to many stakeholders that the use of such illegal labor
practices is not always malicious, so one commonsense step is to
ensure that owners are informed of existing laws, which this
bill intends to do by utilizing the current establishment
application process to increase awareness of basic labor laws
relevant to establishments without onerous requirements on
businesses. The measure would set forth requirements for all
BBC establishments, including nail salons.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: No
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee, this bill will
not result in significant costs related to the requirement to
provide information to licensees in languages other than
English, or to collect applicant demographic data, as BBC has
already translated its informational materials into the
languages specified in this bill or is in the process of doing
so. The analysis notes that there will be additional
information technology costs, likely over $150,000 to make
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changes to the BreEze online application system to record a
license applicant's acknowledgement of his or her responsibility
to comply with BLLs.
SUPPORT: (Verified8/17/16)
California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (source)
Asian Health Services
Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum
Black Women for Wellness
Board of Barbering and Cosmetology
California Employment Lawyers Association
California Immigrant Policy Center
California Labor Federation
California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
Center for Environmental Health
Community Action Marin
Immigrant Resettlement & Cultural Center, Inc.
Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance
Professional Beauty Federation of California
National Employment Law Project
The Greenlining Institute
WorkSafe
OPPOSITION: (Verified8/17/16)
None received
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: A number of nonprofit organizations
focused on improving the health of Asian Americans, serving the
Asian American community in California and groups that work
closely with nail salon workers and their families, as well as
those with experience advocating for employment and labor
rights, are in support of this bill. Supporters believe the
bill strikes the right balance in its focus on education and
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removal of language barriers while requiring owners to have a
basic understanding of their obligations under California labor
law.
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 69-3, 5/19/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Arambula, Atkins, Baker, Bigelow,
Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chau,
Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle, Daly,
Dodd, Eggman, Frazier, Gallagher, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo
Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Grove,
Roger Hernández, Holden, Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Kim,
Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Medina,
Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen,
Patterson, Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago,
Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk,
Wood, Rendon
NOES: Travis Allen, Harper, Mayes
NO VOTE RECORDED: Brough, Chang, Beth Gaines, Hadley, Mathis,
McCarty, Steinorth, Williams
Prepared by:Sarah Mason / B., P. & E.D. / (916) 651-4104
8/17/16 14:57:39
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