Newsom signs bill requiring janitors to take $200 sexual harassment training

(The Center Square) - California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill requiring companies that hire janitors to make sure janitors take sexual assault training every other year, and pay $200 per participant for sessions with under 10 janitors present, and $8 for sessions with 10 or more janitors.

The bill also requires the government to pay UCLA for a study on janitorial wage theft, collective bargaining, gender and race, and create a commission to make recommendations based on the study; the study, commission, and enforcement have a $1 million starting budget and $818,000 budget in the years thereafter.

Before the bill, the state required companies to pay a flat $65 rate per janitor for biannual sexual assault training. The bill not only raises rates to $200 for small janitor sessions and $80 for larger janitor sessions respectively, requires that prices for these sessions be indexed to last year’s increase to the California Price Index, or at the discretion of the California Labor Commissioner “as needed.”

Trainings can only be completed through a “qualified organization” specialized in janitorial sexual harassment training, a list of which is available from the State of California Department of Industrial Relations. Trainings are done by “peers,” or “promotoras” who have been janitors or property service workers for at least two years and received at least 40 hours of sexual assault advocacy training from a qualified organization.

In Los Angeles County, which is home to nearly 10 million people, there is only one qualified organization: the Building Skills Partnership, a labor-oriented 501c(3) nonprofit whose goal is a “A California where workers in low-wage industries can achieve socio-economic mobility and improved quality of life.” BSP says it has “has strong collaborations with SEIU-United Service Workers West,” and in its list of funders includes a large number of unions, state and local governments, nonprofits, and the private companies that use the workers it trains. BSP covers Los Angeles, Sacramento, Orange County, Palo Alto, San Jose, Oakland, and San Diego, meaning it provides training for some of the most populated areas in the state.

Bill sponsor SEIU says the bill “builds upon previous legislation that empowered janitorial service workers to take collective action and use peer counseling to change the culture of harassment and fear in the janitorial industry” and that increasing the cost of training will “allow qualified organizations to bring the program up to scale and realize the original intent of the law which is to change the culture of harassment and fear in the janitorial industry, which for far too long has turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and assault.”

Opposition from the California Business Properties Association says “the collective bargaining process has already provided a robust, evidence-based framework for addressing workload issues,” and that with regards to the study, “lack of adequate representation from management … limits the study's potential to yield meaningful insights.”

A 2019 law in response to growing awareness on the amount of sexual harassment and assault experienced by female janitors created the mandated peer training made more expensive by the new bill. It’s unclear why the training is more expensive for smaller companies than for larger companies.