New California Employee Training Mandate for Workplace Sexual Harassment

In October 2018, the bill, SB 1343, was signed by California Governor Jerry Brown. The new law concerns California’s sexual harassment training requirements. SB 1343 requires any employer with at least five employees must provide at least two hours of sexual harassment prevention training to all supervisory employees and at least one hour of training for all non-supervisory employees within six months of their assumption. The training also must be provided once every two years. The bill was initially set to go into effect on January 1, 2020. The deadline was pushed back to January 1, 2021, due to Governor Newsom signing two amendments in 2019. This new deadline does not change for an employer with 50 or more employees to train new supervisory employees within six months of their promotion or hire.

The purpose of the new law is to decrease the chances of workplace sexual harassment. It allows employees to be able to work in a safer workplace. The Senate bill was introduced by Sen. Holly Mitchell, from Los Angeles and in partnership with California Controller Betty Yee. The bill was introduced to the California Senate after the #MeToo movement drew attention to sexual harassment in all sectors of the workforce. The new bill did not face any opposition. Governor Newsome decided to push the effective date back to change the “awkward” statutory language, which required employees who received training in 2018 to retrain the same employees again in 2019.