Senate Passes Senator Cortese’s Bill to Create High-Quality Jobs in Green Industry

The State Senate on Monday passed a bipartisan bill by Senator Dave Cortese to protect California communities from hazardous industrial pollution while securing high-quality, good-paying jobs in emerging sustainable industries.

SB 740 extends the skilled and trained workforce requirements applied to petroleum refineries to emerging green industries including hydrogen manufacturing, biofuels manufacturing, and carbon dioxide capture. The bill now advances to policy committees in the State Assembly.

“SB 740 is focused on protecting communities from industrial disasters while increasing good paying jobs in sustainable industries,” said Senator Cortese (D-San Jose). “We want to safeguard the environment, protect communities and workers, and build the economy by ensuring that skilled and trained California workers perform the jobs of the future.”

A skilled and trained workforce ensures that workers are performing work in apprenticeable occupations. The Building Trades have 75,000 apprentices in California with a total membership of nearly 500,000.

SB 740 is modeled after SB 54, a 2013 law that required California’s domestic petroleum refineries to use a skilled and trained workforce to perform onsite contracted work. Lawmakers passed SB 54 largely out of concern over the vulnerabilities exposed after the 2012 Richmond refinery fire, a preventable explosion that clouded the East Bay with black smoke and chemicals and prompted a stay-at-home order. SB 740 would ensure that workers in industrial facilities had the training and skills to properly perform their jobs and help prevent accidents and toxic discharges that harm local communities.

The bill will also contribute to California’s emerging green workforce and help meet the state’s climate goals. When California’s refineries shifted to a skilled and trained workforce, the industry did not report worker shortages or disruptions. In fact, the shift worked so well that many refineries chose to enter into direct project labor agreements with the Building Trades.

Here are additional bills by Senator Cortese that passed Monday’s Senate floor session:

SB 636 – Stopping Medical Coverage Denials by Physicians not Licensed in California Stops insurance companies from enlisting out-of-state doctors to cancel medical treatment plans proposed by California doctor for workers’ compensation claims for certain patients.

SB 745 – Drought Resistant Buildings – Directs the California Building Standards Commission to develop mandatory building standards to reduce the designed potable water demand of new buildings by 25 percent to minimize the use of potable water for non-potable uses.

 

***