Update: GREAT NEWS FOR NOW! The potential bill (AB455) that would have mandated vaccines for all Californians is dead for the session. However, it may be passed in future sessions.
‘The public needs to know!’ lobbyist says
The Globe received word late Wednesday from Capitol sources that a gut-and-amend transportation bill is morphing into a bill ordering a vaccine mandate on private industry (seen below).
AB 455 by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), was a bill to authorize the Bay Area Toll Authority to designate transit-only traffic lanes on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, in consultation with the Department of Transportation, Caltrans.
Gut-and-amend bills can be particularly insidious. This secretive process often leaves lawmakers, as well as the public, little or no time to review entirely new legislation dropped into an old bill. And usually, the subject of the legislation has nothing to do with the bill’s previous legislative issue.
Gut-and-amend typically happens with budget issues and heavy special interest legislation. Lawmakers have complained loudly for years that the gut-and-amend process has been grossly abused by whichever party is in power.
Sources say they don’t know if this bill will come to fruition or not.
Assembly Bill 455, (see pdf below) once a transportation bill, is being amended. Here’s how:
- Amendment 1 adds Members Wicks, Low, and Akilah Weber.
- Amendment 2 adds “Principal coauthors: Senators Newman, Pan, and Wiener.”
- Amendment 3 inserts: An act to add Section 52.8 to the Civil Code, to add Section 12940.4 to the Government Code, and to add Section 248.4 to the Labor Code, relating to COVID-19 vaccination requirements, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately.
- Amendment 5: 52.8. (a) Notwithstanding any other law, an establishment, as defined in subdivision (b), shall require each person who is eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, who seeks to enter the indoor facilities of that establishment, to show proof to an employee or authorized agent of the establishment that the person has been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Note: “To the extent allowable under state and federal law and any employment agreement entered into on or after the effective date of this act, an employee who refuses to comply with this section may be subject to termination.”
And suddenly, a bill which could not pass through the Legislature legitimately in the committee process, would mandate the COVID vaccine on employees in private industry or be fired.
The gutted bill also now says:
(1) COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave shall be available to an employee if that employee is unable to work due to either of the following reasons: (A) The employee is attending an appointment to receive a vaccine for protection against contracting COVID-19. (B) The employee is experiencing symptoms related to a COVID-19 vaccine.
But that’s not all. There’s more:
(2) An employee shall be entitled to the following number of hours of COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave:
(A) An employee is entitled to 24 hours of COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave. (B) COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave to which an employee is entitled pursuant to this section shall be in addition to any paid sick leave that may be available to the employee under any other law. (c) An employee may determine how many hours of COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave to use, up to the total number of hours to which the employee is entitled pursuant to subparagraph (A). The COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave is available for immediate use by the employee.
(3) Each hour of COVID-19 vaccine supplemental paid sick leave shall be compensated at the regular rate of pay to which the employee would be entitled if the employee had been scheduled to work those hours pursuant to existing law or an applicable collective bargaining agreement.
Capitol sources note business groups like the cover of this bill being a government edict so they can wash their hands of some liability on COVID protection. And, labor is using this to extort more concessions like additional sick leave and bonus hazard pay.
A Capitol source said, “It’s never good when big business and labor may be on the same side of things.”
By Katy Grimes
Read Original Article and View Bill Amendments on CaliforniaGlobe.com
Vaccine Mandates for ALL in California Have Arrived and We Must STOP Them!!!
A Voice for Choice Advocacy has sounded the warning for the past 18 months that societal vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are on their way to California. Unfortunately, we were right! Regardless of your current vaccine status, you should be extremely concerned with coming legislation.
With only two weeks of the legislative session left in California, there are two potential bills being brought forward by Assembly members Wicks, Low and Weber, as well as Senators Pan, Newman and Wiener
Please sign your name on this petition to show your opposition to this bill and to mandating vaccines in California.
Amendments To Assembly Bill No. 455 PDF
AB455-Draft-RN-2118069-Completed-082621Potential AB1102 language
AB1102-Draft-RN-2118081-Completed-082621These bills would:
1) Require ALL employers in California to require all their employees to be full vaccinated.
2) Would require everyone 12 years and older to be fully vaccinated to enter any inn, hotel, motel, or lodging establishment, any restaurant, bar, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food or beverages for consumption on the premises, and any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium, gym, spa, or other place of exhibition or entertainment.
The only exemptions will be medical and disability exemptions, with the slight possibility of a religious exemption.
Furthermore, there is no definition of “fully vaccinated.” It will likely be up to the California Department of Public Health to define that. You may be fully vaccinated today with two vaccines, but tomorrow when CDPH decides you need a booster or three, you will be prevented from entering these establishments or keeping your job. Your 11 year old will be able to come to restaurants with you but when they turn 12 years old, they will have to take however many doses of the vaccine to comply
So if you are not “fully vaccinated”, you pretty much can’t go inside anywhere other than the grocery store, the pharmacy and church. You also can’t go to work. If this bill gets introduced and passes, we will be living in a fully totalitarian state, where discrimination and segregation are the norm.
- Those who are not currently vaccinated in California are disproportionately Black, Hispanic and Native American. This bill will discriminate against these minority groups and will exacerbate already existing health inequities given minorities lesser access to the healthcare system.
- Those who have had COVID-19 and therefore have natural immunity, but would be considered unvaccinated, even though they are less likely to transmit COVID-19 than the vaccinated.
- Small businesses, which have already been hit hardest by COVID restrictions, will again be impacted. 45% of Californians will not be able to patronize these establishments.
- The already hard hit, California lodging facilities will lose business, with the unvaccinated forced to stay at Airbnb type vacation rentals when traveling.
- Employers, already struggling to find staff, will have to fire those who refuse to get vaccinated, leaving them even more short-handed.
- Employers will take on the burden of liability, opening themselves up to Civil Rights and vaccine injury liability lawsuits.
- Employers will see workers compensation and insurance costs skyrocket.
If this bill passes, the real question is where does it end? The removal of your driver’s license, throttled internet access, flight bans? A social credit score system that monitors everything you do? If you think this could never be a reality in California, take a look at this article on Business Insider:
And consider the billion dollar deals Governor Newsom has made with China over the past 18 months.
Please sign your name on this petition to show your opposition to this bill and to mandating vaccines in California.
