Newsom Calls on Legislature to Expand Aid for Essential Workers

Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the state Legislature Friday to expand benefits to front-line workers with COVID-19.

With the virus and its economic effects disproportionately falling on grocery, restaurant and agricultural workers, Newsom threw his weight behind proposals to expand sick leave and workers' compensation for those employees.

"This is where we are seeing the spread — the essential workforce disproportionately represented by the Latino/Latinx community," he said.

Newsom previously signed an executive order granting up to two weeks of paid sick leave for farmworkers and grocery store and fast food workers. Because many of those workers are employed by large companies, they were excluded from a federal expansion of paid leave in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Under another order, essential workers who contract COVID-19 can access workers' compensation insurance, shifting the burden to employers to prove that transmission did not occur on the job.

Newsom said he hopes the Legislature can expand or codify the protections into law when the state Senate and Assembly return from recess on Monday.

"People that are feeling sick, people that may be sick, we don't want them going to work and infecting other people," he added.

The push for state action comes as federal relief measures under the CARES Act are slated to expire in the next week, including enhanced weekly unemployment benefits of $600.

Assembly Bill 196, written by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, would go a step further, preventing businesses from contesting whether an essential worker who contracted COVID-19 did so on the job.

The California Chamber of Commerce opposes the legislation, arguing it will drive up workers' compensation costs for employers, while establishing "an extremely concerning precedent for expanding presumptions into the private sector for COVID-19 issues."

— Guy Marzorati (@GuyMarzorati)