Labor committee advances bills on pensions, public safety, ports, AI and apprenticeships

The California State Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee met to hear multiple bills on pensions, public safety, workforce supports and infrastructure and moved most forward to the Senate Appropriations Committee or the Senate floor.

The committee advanced SB 301 on pension parity, SB 487 on injured public safety workers' civil recoveries, SB 617 on WARN Act layoff notices, SB 703 and SB 826 addressing port trucking transparency and port automation/cybersecurity, SB 366 commissioning a UCLA study of AI's economic and fiscal impacts, SB 469 establishing a Public Infrastructure Task Force, SB 845 expanding youth apprenticeships, and SB 850 addressing staff misconduct and pension forfeiture in women’s correctional facilities. One item, SB 801 (herder overtime and grazing for wildfire mitigation), was presented for testimony and was pulled by the author for further stakeholder work.

SB 301 (Grayson): The bill would bar selective exclusion of groups of employees from membership in retirement systems governed by the County Employees’ Retirement Law of 1937 (CERL), aligning those contracts with protections in the Public Employees’ Retirement Law (PERL). Sponsor testimony focused on a 2019 Placentia action that removed firefighters from pension coverage and on AB 2967 (2020) that closed a CalPERS loophole. Doug Subers of the California Professional Firefighters said, “We represent 35,000 professional firefighters and emergency medical services personnel statewide.” The committee recorded a vote of 4–0 and the item was placed on call for the Senate floor (motion: pass to Senate floor; outcome: on call).

SB 487 (Grayson): The bill would ensure that peace officers and firefighters injured in the line of duty receive a guaranteed share of third‑party civil recoveries when those recoveries are insufficient to fully cover both the employer’s reimbursement claim and the worker’s proven damages. Attorney Megan Bartlett described the practical harms that leave injured…