State workers to get minimum of 5 paid sick days annually
Workers in California soon will receive a minimum of five days of paid sick leave annually, instead of three, under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday.
The law, which takes effect in January, also increases the amount of sick leave workers can carry over into the following year. Newsom said it demonstrates that prioritizing the health and well-being of workers “is of the utmost importance for California's future.”
“Too many folks are still having to choose between skipping a day's pay and taking care of themselves or their family members when they get sick,” Newsom said in announcing his action.
It was one of more than a dozen bills the Democratic governor signed Wednesday. He has until mid-October to act on all the legislation sent to him this year. He can sign, veto or let bills become law without his signature.
Beyond preventing workers from choosing between taking a day off or getting paid, proponents of the sick day legislation argue it will help curb the spread of diseases and make sure employees can be productive at work. But the California Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses across the state, said it will be burdensome for small businesses.
“Far too many small employers simply cannot absorb this new cost, especially when viewed in context of all of California's other leaves and paid benefits, and they will have to reduce jobs, cut wages, or raise consumer prices to deal with this mandate,” Jennifer Barrera, the group's president, said in a statement.
Newsom already signed a law to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour. But he vetoed a bill that would have given unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying the fund the state would use is approaching nearly $20 billion in debt.
Cyberattack on Clorox limits supplies and impacts shares
Clorox Co. slumped to the lowest in more than a year after the maker of bleach and other cleaning products detailed the financial impact from an August cyberattack.
The company's shares have fallen more than 20% since the company first reported the incident Aug. 14.
After the market closed Wednesday, Clorox said the attack that halted production at some U.S. factories and prompted product shortages put significant pressure on sales and profit in the quarter ending Sept. 30. The company also said it expects ongoing, though moderating, operational impacts in the current quarter.
Clorox, which reports earnings for its last quarter in November, said Wednesday that organic sales for the period may show a drop of as much as 26%. Before the attack, it had been expecting “midsingle-digits” growth.
Meanwhile, it now expects quarterly gross margin to decline year over year, versus a previous forecast that it would rise.
“While getting more specific details on the impact is a positive, there are still potentially negatives ahead,” Wells Fargo analyst Chris Carey said.
U.K. puts Amazon and Microsoft's cloud services in crosshairs
Amazon.com and Microsoft's cloud services face an investigation by the U.K.'s antitrust watchdog over concerns the U.S. companies may be abusing their market power.
The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday it's opening a market investigation into the supply of public cloud infrastructure in the U.K.
The probe follows a yearlong study from telecom regulator Ofcom which found evidence that major players such as Amazon and Microsoft made it hard for customers to use multiple suppliers or switch. The two companies provide increasingly essential remote storage and computing which has become more and more prevalent across business.
“Some U.K. businesses have told us they're concerned about it being too difficult to switch or mix and match cloud provider, and it's not clear that competition is working well,” Fergal Farragher, the Ofcom director responsible for the study, said in a statement.
The CMA's market investigations typically last around 18 months, and the agency has the power to impose structural remedies, selling off part of their business to improve competition, if significant issues are found.