Workplace Violence Prevention Laws in General Industry (Non-Health Care)

SB 553 was signed into law on September 30, 2023 and will be enforceable on July 1, 2024.

This bill amended Labor Code section 6401.7 and added section 6401.9, relating to occupational safety.

Labor Code section 6401.7 was amended to add 6401.7(a)(7). This section requires employers to develop and implement a workplace violence prevention plan in accordance with new Labor Code section 6401.9, which sets out various requirements.

This section provides definitions of terms related to workplace violence, applicability as a general industry standard, and outlines the elements required in an employer’s workplace violence prevention plan, which are summarized as follows:

  1. Defines several workplace violence prevention terms.
  2. Makes section 6401.9 applicable to all employers, employees, places of employment, and employer-provided housing, with exceptions to specific employers or circumstances.
  3. Requires employers to establish a written workplace violence prevention plan that involves employees and details what is required in the written plan.
  4. Requires employers to maintain a violent incident log for each workplace violence incident, recording various details about the incident, including date, time, location, types of violence consequences, and personal information.
  5. Requires employers to provide training to employees about workplace violence prevention with training material that is appropriate to the employees’ educational level and language.
  6. Requires employers to keep records of workplace violence hazard identification, evaluation, correction, training, violent incident logs, and incident investigations to be maintained and made available to the division, employees, and their representatives.
  7. Allows the Division to enforce by citing directly to the Labor Code.
  8. Tasks the Division with proposing standards regarding workplace violence no later than December 31, 2025, and the Standards board is to adopt these standards no later than December 31, 2026.
  9. Makes subdivisions (b) to (g) operative on and after July 1, 2024.

March 13, 2024