California legislation that would have increased the amount of notice for mass layoffs and included contract workers in those requirements was vetoed on Oct. 8 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Bill 1356 would have amended the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act, or Cal/WARN, to require an employer to provide 75 days’ notice of a mass layoff, up from 60 days. It would also have expanded the act to include employees of labor contractors, among other things.

“The inclusion of employees of labor contractors, while laudable in its intent, risks imposing liability on client employers who cannot reasonably be expected to know whether their actions will cause job loss for employees of their subcontractors and may not have the information necessary to provide the required notice,” Newsom wrote in his veto message.

He continued, “In addition, the bill expands the definition of ‘covered establishment’ to include a group of locations anywhere in the state and subjects chain businesses, such as restaurants, to the law’s requirements even where layoffs are unrelated and occur in geographically disparate regions of the state. It is not clear that this change is consistent with the purpose of Cal/WARN to protect local communities and enable a rapid response to a potential shock to a local economy and workforce.”

The California Legislature had passed the bill in September.