Today's Law As Amended


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SB-432 Workplace safety: lodging establishments: housekeeping.(2011-2012)



As Amends the Law Today


SECTION 1.

 Section 6714 is added to the Labor Code, to read:

6714.
 (a) The Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board shall, no later than December 1, 2012, adopt an occupational safety and health standard for lodging establishment housekeeping, with an operative date of September 1, 2013, to be fully complied with by December 31, 2015. The standard shall apply to all hotels, motels, and other similar transient lodging establishments in California. The standard shall apply to bed sheets and long handled tools, and shall include the following requirements:
(1) (A) The use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within the lodging establishment. Fitted sheets may be purchased in the normal course of the replacement of bed linens, so long as full compliance with the standard is met no later than December 31, 2015.
(B) As an alternative to the use of a fitted sheet, the use of equipment, such as a wedge, or other device, work practice, or method that assists in sheet installation, if the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board determines during the standard adoption process that the use of the alternative equipment, work practice, or method that assists in sheet installation provides the equivalent health and safety protection provided by the use of a fitted sheet.
(2) The use of long-handled tools such as mops or similar devices in order to eliminate the practice by housekeepers of working in a stooped, kneeling, or squatting position in order to clean bathroom floors, walls, tubs, toilets, and other bathroom surfaces.
(b) Nothing in this section limits the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to grant a variance pursuant to Section 143 or any other provision of law.
(c) The division shall enforce this section in the ordinary course of its duties pursuant to authority set forth in this part.
(d) For the purpose of this section, a “fitted sheet” means a bed sheet containing elastic or similar material sewn into each of the four corners that allows the sheet to stay in place over the mattress.
SEC. 2.
 No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution.