So much blood was spilled over the light rail workshop in San Jose’s Santa Clara Valley that Senator Dave Cortese put booties over his work boots to inspect the scene.

to assure

churned

in Cortese’s mind hours after the

May 26, 2021, mass shooting

the most violent Bay Areas in a generation: could this have been prevented? What were the protocols

for dealing with such emergencies

and how could employees have been better protected?

A disgruntled former railroad employee armed with three semi-automatic pistols killed nine colleagues before turning one of the guns on himself. The shooting had a major impact on the senator.

I started asking questions about what kind of plans were there to detect or prevent this kind of damage and realized there weren’t really too many, Cortese (D-San Jose)

recently told The Times

. There wasn’t much going on at all.

Cortese introduced a variety of safety measures, including Senate Bill 1294, signed into law last year, which created wellness centers

provide mental health care

transit workers

, an attempt to prevent future tragedies. Cortese says he is still working to protect employees from workplace violence

his latest legislation, SB 553.

However, critics say the bill goes too far.

the bill,

which the Senate passed May 29-8 on May 31,

requires employers to create a log of violent incidents, implement active shooting training,

provided

Train shoplifters for store employees, prevent untrained employees from confronting shoplifters, and help file restraining orders against attackers.

Bill opponents, including Republican senators and the California Retailers Assn., argue the legislation jeopardizes small business livelihoods

owners needing to hire security personnel

and is too drastic to work for all industries.

Cortese’s bill and the debate it has sparked come amid an increase in workplace homicides.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in December that workplace homicides are up more than 20% in 2021 to 481 deaths.

This is the last year for which data is available.

That number is the highest

a period of five years

, up from 458 in 2017. Of the deaths in 2021, 387 were caused by a shooting. Cal/OSHA estimated the number of workplace homicides in California at 57 in 2021, with 42 gun-related deaths.

Numbers up

not deadly

Violence in the workplace varies. The U.S. Department of Justice released a report last year stating that an average of 1.3 million non-fatal workplace violent crimes occurred annually between 2015 and 2019. The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that in 2020 there were 37,060 nonfatal workplace injuries resulting from an intentional injury by another person.

Cortese aims to combat incidents of violence with a plan that would allow employers, large and small, to develop workplace violence prevention strategies. He envisions the plans including security personnel, be they guards or workers whose job it is to find and stop thieves. This part of the bill in particular has generated controversy. The bottom line, according to the senator, is to protect non-security personnel from being drafted to deter would-be shoplifters: Don’t push the pickpocket or the man sweeping the floor into a confrontational situation, he said.

Cortese gave no example of such an event, although there have been a number of high-profile cases where guards or loss prevention have been involved in altercations. A security guard in San Francisco shot and killed a shoplifter in April, sparking protests.

But Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Assn., said mom-and-pop stores with limited budgets are unable to afford dedicated security personnel. “I’ve talked to those small businesses and they told me they will absolutely close if they have to hire security,” Michelin said. “They’re barely keeping it up the way it is.” And while Cortese says the openness of interpretation around security personnel with no minimum qualifications or requirements is “a gift” that gives employers leeway, Michelin disagrees. The result of that lack of clarity, she says, is that employees are lumped together, with little separation between “loss prevention versus someone filling the shelves.”

SB 553 requires employers to establish a workplace violence prevention plan.

One of the more controversial parts of the plan involves the implementation of security protocols.

Cortese said

in any case, every employer will need it

“judgement”

Facilities for a number of dedicated security personnel.

Early iterations of the bill classified such positions as security guards, but have since been revised to include loss prevention personnel and others serving in a security role.

ace

Cortese’s bill is under consideration, Cal/OSHA, the state board responsible for regulating workplace safety,

is

developing a set of standards for the prevention of violence in the workplace

something that has been going on since 2017.

The bureau held three advisory meetings between 2017 and 2018, but only one since then.

Cal/OSHA has been working on this for six years and they’re barely at the point of having a design, Cortese said. With this background of violence… do we really want to wait for OSHA to do something?

Karen Fuller Tynan, an attorney specializing in Cal/OSHA security issues, said

the agency

should be in charge of writing workplace regulations rather than individual legislators.

The agency’s plan, she said, was sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic, “so I think it’s unfair to slap Cal/OSHA for delays.”

She said the

Cortese

bill was not the right fit and thought adjustments were needed for smaller companies.

Tynan

said the bill should specifically target security personnel in companies with 50 or fewer employees.

The issues of a 24-hour corner bodega versus a high-end retailer are different,” she said, “and we don’t have to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.

Cortese said the bill was not final and

changes were possible.

The bill passed the Senate on May 31, 29-8, and was first read in the General Assembly the next day. SB 553 is scheduled to be discussed June 28 by the Assembly Labor Committee on its way to what Cortese hopes is approval and a signature from Gov. Gavin Newsom.