In the next few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom will likely sign a raft of workers’ comp bills that were passed by the California Legislature. More on that in posts to come.

Julius Young

But what workers’ comp bills failed this year? Let’s recap those while we wait on the disposition of the bills that successfully ran the Capitol’s legislative gauntlet:

• AB 404 would have provided for a review of the Medical-Legal Fee Schedule every two years and indexing the MLFS; held in committee in August.
• AB 2614 would have required a Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation study of staffing firms’ premium shifting tactics; held in committee in August.
• AB 399, sponsored by the California Society of Industrial Medicine and Surgery, originally would have addressed problems workers have in identifying medical provider networks and physicians, but a later amendment focused only on bill review issues; a May hearing was canceled.
• SB 213 would have created rebuttable injury presumptions for hospital workers who provided direct care; held in committee in June.
• AB 2894 would have required contractors to certify the workers’ compensation class codes endorsed on the licensee’s policy and require that this information is posted on the internet; held in committee August.

Other bills pertaining that failed to advance were as follows:

• AB 2932 would have changed the basic workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours; stalled in committee in March.
• AB 2182 would have provided for a duty to accommodate family responsibilities; held in committee in May.
• AB 2095 would have required large employers to submit annual statistics on a wide range of personnel information and would have set up a certification program with incentives for employers that scored well on data according to a methodology to be developed; held in committee in May.
• AB 1400 was to create a single-payer health care system in California called CalCare; died in February.
• AB 1651, known as the Workplace Technology Accountability Act, would have imposed various duties on employers and their vendors regarding the ability to collect and use worker data; failed to advance in committee in April.
• SB 1149 would have banned secret settlements in products liability or environmental hazard cases; failed an August vote on the California Assembly floor.

As of the date of this post, Newsom has not vetoed any 2022 workers’ compensation bills.

Julius Young is an applicants' attorney and a partner for the Boxer & Gerson law firm in Oakland. This column was reprinted with his permission from his Workers Comp Zone blog on the firm's website.