(a)The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1)California is home to two million individuals, of the estimated 23.5 million individuals throughout the country, that live in food deserts, as reported by the United States Department of Agriculture. Kroger, a large grocery retailer, plans to close down two grocery stores in the City of Long Beach due to the city council’s passing of an ordinance for grocery store frontline workers to be paid an additional $4 per hour. This may lead to rising unemployment and leave constituents to lose access to healthy and affordable food in their community.

(2)Other cities and counties in California, including the Cities of Berkeley, Coachella, Montebello, Oakland, San Leandro, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood and the Counties of Los Angeles and Santa Clara are instituting or considering hazard pay measures for grocery store workers because grocery store workers have been an integral part of grocery store operations in order to keep the grocery stores open and food on the table.

(3)The retail grocery store workforce is growing faster in California than the private employment sector as a whole, yet median hourly wages of grocery stores workers, the largest segment of food retail workers, fell from $12.97 in 1999 to $11.33 in 2010, a decline of 12.6 percent. Meanwhile, overall private sector median hourly wages rose slightly, from $16 to $16.16, an increase of 1 percent. Thus, by 2010, the median hourly wage for grocery store workers was about 70 percent of that earned by the private sector workforce overall.

(4)A June 2014 report on food retail workers commissioned by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Western States Council reported the demographics of workers in California grocery stores as 43.7 percent Latino, 37.3 percent non-Hispanic White, 4.1 percent Black, 13.9 percent Asian-Pacific Islander, and 1 percent other. Although statistics show that non-White Hispanics are the second highest number of those employed by grocery stores, people of color earn lower wages.

(5)CalFresh is California’s version of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides up to $194 monthly food benefits to low-income residents, older people, and those on Supplemental Security Income, depending on need. These food benefits allow households to meet nutrition needs and prevent food insecurity.

(6)Advance notification of grocery store closures is needed because many low-income Californians are suffering and losing access to healthy and affordable food. Thus, they need to be made aware of a closure ahead of time, and informed of comparable services in the local area. According to the California Association of Food Banks, one in four Californians, an estimated 10 million individuals, are currently struggling with food insecurity and do not know where their next meal will come from. Food insecurity is described as the occasional or constant lack of access to the food one needs for a healthy, active life. Food insecurity seriously impacts one’s well-being and can result in poor school attendance and performance, lowered workplace productivity, and physical and mental health problems.

(7)Grocery store workers have served as some of our greatest heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic because they have been showing up to work, day in and day out, ensuring that their fellow Californians have food on their table to feed their families. In addition to grocery store workers earning low wages, a Harvard University study found that frontline workers participating in essential work duties have left them vulnerable to become at least five times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 due to everyday interactions with customers.

(8)The top 12 non-English language groups in California, according to the United State Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2013–17 estimates, are: Spanish, Chinese, including Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, including Filipino, Korean, Armenian, Farsi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Punjabi, and Khmer. Therefore, notices are needed in a number of languages because California is home to 11 million immigrants that speak a variety of languages and access to information in a language that they understand is a priority.

(9)If grocery establishments are going to close their doors, then the least they can do is provide enough notice to the city, county, local workforce development board, and State Department of Social Services of intended closure, and ensure that their employees are equipped with resources necessary to gain employment elsewhere and to locate healthy and affordable food in the surrounding community.

(b)It is the intent of the Legislature that this act ensures that grocery establishment customers who receive CalFresh have information that grocery stores are going to be closed before they are closed, and that employees of those stores have information about California’s primary safety net programs and job training opportunities.

If the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.