Economy
California introduces new laws for online privacy, gig economy – CBC.ca
California’s long tradition of advancing nation-leading legislation continues into the new year, with laws reining in the gig economy, boosting online privacy and discouraging shootings by police, among other potential trend-setters.
The laws have sent businesses including Uber, Lyft and Google scrambling, not to mention U.S. President Donald Trump.
The state dominated by Democrats has delighted in tweaking the Republican president on immigration and other issues, though legislation requiring Trump to reveal his tax returns backfired when the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled it unconstitutional.
Some of the higher-profile new laws taking effect Jan. 1 include:
Online privacy
The nation’s most sweeping data privacy law takes effect with the new year. The law passed in 2018 requires companies to tell consumers what data they collect about them, why it was collected and who sees it. Consumers can refuse to let companies sell that data, and companies are barred from selling data from children younger than 16 without consent.
Facebook and other technology and internet giants have been heavily criticized for sharing, selling or targeting personal information that customers thought was private. The San Francisco developer who pushed for the law, Alastair Mactaggart, is now advancing a 2020 ballot measure to protect the law by creating a new state agency to enforce the privacy protections and requiring greater protections for users under age 16 to opt in.
Gig economy
California is making it harder for many industries to treat workers like contractors instead of employees who are entitled to minimum wage and other benefits such as workers’ compensation. The legislature carved out certain exemptions after the state Supreme Court ruled in favour of workers at the delivery company Dynamex in 2018.
The California Trucking Association and two associations representing freelance journalists and photographers have already sued on behalf of their members. The ride-sharing company Uber has said it will defend its current model from legal challenges. And Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have said they’ll spend $30 million US to overturn the law at the ballot box in 2020 if they don’t win concessions from lawmakers.
Police shootings
Two new laws together give California one of the U.S.’s most comprehensive approaches to deterring shootings by police. One changes the legal standard for when police can use deadly force, while the companion law increases officers’ training on how to handle confrontations.
California’s old standard was based on the doctrine of “reasonable fear,” meaning officers were unlikely to face charges for even questionable uses of lethal force if prosecutors or jurors believed they had a reason to fear for their safety. The new law allows police to use deadly force only when “necessary” to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious injury to officers or bystanders. But it doesn’t define necessary.
Hair discrimination
California becomes the first state to bar workplace and school discrimination against black people for wearing hairstyles such as braids, twists and locks. The new law says hairstyles are associated with race and therefore protected against discrimination.
Federal courts have historically ruled that, unlike characteristics such as race, hair can be changed, so there are no grounds for discrimination complaints based on hairstyle. The California law says “race” also includes “traits historically associated with race.”
The issue came to wide public attention a year ago when Andrew Johnson, a black high school wrestler in New Jersey, was told by a referee that he had to cut off his dreadlocks if he wanted to compete.
Vaccinations
State public health officials have new tools to crack down on doctors who write fraudulent medical exemptions for schoolchildren’s vaccinations, after the most emotionally charged legislative debate of the year repeatedly drew hundreds of supporters and opponents to the Capitol.
Officials can investigate doctors who grant more than five medical exemptions in a year and schools with vaccination rates under 95 per cent, the threshold that experts say means a population is resistant to a disease like measles.
It includes a phase-out period for existing medical exemptions similar to one allowed when California eliminated personal belief vaccine exemptions in 2015. For instance, a kindergartner with an exemption can retain it through sixth grade, while a seventh-grader can be exempted through high school.
Rent control
Landlords will be barred from raising yearly rent prices by more than five per cent plus the cost of inflation under a new law that drew supporters who said they can no longer afford the state’s soaring housing costs. Landlords also won’t be allowed to evict someone without a reason or refuse to rent to someone solely because they have a federal Section 8 housing voucher.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called it the “strongest package in America,” though the restriction follows Oregon’s slightly higher statewide rent cap. A previous law still bans local governments from adopting their own rent control policies, though opponents want to overturn that restriction with a 2020 ballot measure.
Child sex assault
California is joining several other states in giving adults who were sexually assaulted as children more time to sue, a measure expected to trigger multitudes of new lawsuits against the Catholic church, Boy Scouts of America and other organizations.
The law gives victims of childhood sex abuse until age 40 to sue, up from the current age of 26. It alternately gives adults five years to sue after discovering they suffered psychological or other damages from a sexual assault, whichever is later. And it gives victims three years to file past claims that missed earlier deadlines.
Economy
China Wants Everyone to Trade In Their Old Cars, Fridges to Help Save Its Economy – Bloomberg
China’s world-beating electric vehicle industry, at the heart of growing trade tensions with the US and Europe, is set to receive a big boost from the government’s latest effort to accelerate growth.
That’s one takeaway from what Beijing has revealed about its plan for incentives that will encourage Chinese businesses and households to adopt cleaner technologies. It’s widely expected to be one of this year’s main stimulus programs, though question-marks remain — including how much the government will spend.
Economy
German Business Outlook Hits One-Year High as Economy Heals – BNN Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — German business sentiment improved to its highest level in a year — reinforcing recent signs that Europe’s largest economy is exiting two years of struggles.
An expectations gauge by the Ifo institute rose to 89.9. in April from a revised 87.7 the previous month. That exceeds the 88.9 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. A measure of current conditions also advanced.
“Sentiment has improved at companies in Germany,” Ifo President Clemens Fuest said. “Companies were more satisfied with their current business. Their expectations also brightened. The economy is stabilizing, especially thanks to service providers.”
A stronger global economy and the prospect of looser monetary policy in the euro zone are helping drag Germany out of the malaise that set in following Russia’s attack on Ukraine. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said last week that the country may have “turned the corner,” while Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also expressed optimism, citing record employment and retreating inflation.
There’s been a particular shift in the data in recent weeks, with the Bundesbank now estimating that output rose in the first quarter, having only a month ago foreseen a contraction that would have ushered in a first recession since the pandemic.
Even so, the start of the year “didn’t go great,” according to Fuest.
“What we’re seeing at the moment confirms the forecasts, which are saying that growth will be weak in Germany, but at least it won’t be negative,” he told Bloomberg Television. “So this is the stabilization we expected. It’s not a complete recovery. But at least it’s a start.”
Monthly purchasing managers’ surveys for April brought more cheer this week as Germany returned to expansion for the first time since June 2023. Weak spots remain, however — notably in industry, which is still mired in a slump that’s being offset by a surge in services activity.
“We see an improving worldwide economy,” Fuest said. “But this doesn’t seem to reach German manufacturing, which is puzzling in a way.”
Germany, which was the only Group of Seven economy to shrink last year and has been weighing on the wider region, helped private-sector output in the 20-nation euro area strengthen this month, S&P Global said.
–With assistance from Joel Rinneby, Kristian Siedenburg and Francine Lacqua.
(Updates with more comments from Fuest starting in sixth paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
Economy
Parallel economy: How Russia is defying the West’s boycott
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When Moscow resident Zoya, 62, was planning a trip to Italy to visit her daughter last August, she saw the perfect opportunity to buy the Apple Watch she had long dreamed of owning.
Officially, Apple does not sell its products in Russia.
The California-based tech giant was one of the first companies to announce it would exit the country in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
But the week before her trip, Zoya made a surprise discovery while browsing Yandex.Market, one of several Russian answers to Amazon, where she regularly shops.
Not only was the Apple Watch available for sale on the website, it was cheaper than in Italy.
Zoya bought the watch without a moment’s delay.
The serial code on the watch that was delivered to her home confirmed that it was manufactured by Apple in 2022 and intended for sale in the United States.
“In the store, they explained to me that these are genuine Apple products entering Russia through parallel imports,” Zoya, who asked to be only referred to by her first name, told Al Jazeera.
“I thought it was much easier to buy online than searching for a store in an unfamiliar country.”
Nearly 1,400 companies, including many of the most internationally recognisable brands, have since February 2022 announced that they would cease or dial back their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine.
But two years after the invasion, many of these companies’ products are still widely sold in Russia, in many cases in violation of Western-led sanctions, a months-long investigation by Al Jazeera has found.
Aided by the Russian government’s legalisation of parallel imports, Russian businesses have established a network of alternative supply chains to import restricted goods through third countries.
The companies that make the products have been either unwilling or unable to clamp down on these unofficial distribution networks.
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