With temperatures in the high 90s, more than 200 protesters, most of them small business owners, gathered outside the East Pasadena offices of State Assemblymember Chris Holden Tuesday to protest California State Bill 553, which recently passed the State Senate, and is due for an Assembly hearing on Thursday.

Holden’s office was closed for the day, so protesters gathered on the steps of the Rosemead Boulevard office chanting and listening to speeches from a range of San Gabriel Valley small business owners. 

Having arrived with reportedly more than 100,000 petition signatures, according to one organizer, the group opted not to leave them at the office mailbox but  will personally deliver them to Sacramento later in the week.

The bill, introduced by Senator Dave Cortese, seeks to establish complex new workplace violence prevention standards. It has already passed the state Senate and could pass in the State Assembly by Sept. 1.

SB553 would, among other aspects, require every California employer with at least one employee to create, implement, and maintain a detailed workplace violence prevention plan to protect employees and other personnel from aggressive and violent behavior at the workplace. 

Under the bill, employers would be prohibited from forcing non-security employees to confront active shoplifters or enter confrontational situations with intruders engaged in criminal activity who may be armed. The bill also requires employers to provide active shooter training to all non-healthcare workers and maintain a log of violent incidents.

SB 553 also authorizes labor unions to seek temporary restraining orders on behalf of employees who may be targets of workplace violence or other credible threats of violence. 

The bill has faced opposition from some business owners and organizations, such as the California Chamber of Commerce, who argue that SB 553 is overreaching and imposes excessive workplace violence standards. 

As Harleen Saini, whose family owns a small business, noted Tuesday, “Maybe (Holden) catered this towards much larger corporations that have maybe 40 employees on the floor at any given time, but with small businesses, their employees are like family. 

“We might have three people employed throughout the whole day,” Saini continued. “And so taking that into consideration, the losses that we seem to have to face because of robberies,  and consequently,  now having to find people to train regularly, and keeping logs for over a year, we’re facing many potential consequences from that.” 

Saini said that the problem is that blame has been shifted onto small business owners who have been told that they need to provide more training. 

“We need to keep more logs,” she added, “And we need to create alarm systems, things that just aren’t feasible in the scale of a small business. So it seems like it’s either we get along, go along with this bill and ultimately face potentially shutting our business down.” 

The group will be traveling to Sacramento by bus on Thursday morning to continue their protest.

By publication time, Assemblymember Holden’s office had not responded to a request for comment.