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Chamber Puts This Year’s ‘Job Killer’ Bills in Sights

The California Chamber of Commerce recently cited 23 proposed laws as “job killers” that the organization says could harm employers and further erode the state’s business climate.

The chamber and an alliance of other statewide business groups mount annual campaigns to block such bills from becoming law.

“It’s imperative that legislators stop introducing and passing bills that cost jobs and erode the quality of life for all Californians,” said Allan Zaremberg, chief executive of the California chamber.

The chamber has had a good track record of defeating job-killer bills. It identified 30 last year, and only five passed the legislature, with just one signed into law. The rest were either blocked or amended to remove provisions the chamber found objectionable.

This year’s crop includes, among others, proposals to cut the overall sales tax but extend it to services, ban polystyrene food containers, index the minimum wage to inflation, and prevent the state from contracting with companies that use many parts made outside the U.S.

“Card Check”

The chamber also is targeting a bill that would expand so-called “card check” votes for union organizing to hundreds of private employers that are now exempted.

The chamber’s focus is most heavily on taxes, and workplace mandates and wages.

Two of the bills—one by Democratic Assem-blywoman Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills, and another from fellow party member Mike Gatto of Burbank—would extend state sales taxes to some businesses in the service sector.

Huber’s bill would impose a broad tax on services, while reducing the overall state sales tax rate for both retail products and services to 4 percent of the sales price. The sales tax rate is now 7.75% in most cities in Orange County, and slightly higher in some locales that have imposed local additions to the levy.

Gatto’s bill would extend the current state sales tax to private jet services, yacht storage and other luxury services. In exchange, small-business owners would get a state income tax exemption for the first $10,000 of business income.

Chamber lobbyist Marc Burgat said the group is most concerned about a bill that would allow employees in wage disputes to place liens on their employers’ property for the amount they believe they are owed.

from the Los Angeles Business Journal

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