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McCRACKEN, STEMERMAN & HOLSBERRY, LLP Grocery Worker Hazard Pay Ordinances February 2, 2021 Page 4 of 5 2020 WL 6439166, at *11 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 18, 2020) (rejecting contracts-clause challenge to AB5’s classification of rideshare drivers as employees “\[b\]ecause ‘“\[s\]tates possess broad authority under their police powers to regulate the employment relationship to protect workers within the State\[.\]”’”) (internal citation omitted). Businesses in California are already heavily regulated in the wages that they may pay, through state and local minimum-wage laws, overtime laws, paid meal period requirements, and sick pay requirements to name a few. No modern court has held that an employer may avoid a statutory minimum- or premium-pay regulation by pointing to its private employment contracts. Moreover, even if CGA could show that the hazard-pay ordinance “substantially impaired” its employment contracts to pay something less, “\[u\]nless the State itself is a contracting party, ‘as is customary in reviewing economic and social regulation, . . . courts properly defer to legislative judgment as to the necessity and reasonableness of a particular measure.’ ” Energy Reserves, 459 U.S. at 412–13 (quoting United States Trust Co., 431 U.S. at 22–23);Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass’n v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 506 (1987); RUI One Corp., 371 F.3d at 1150 (upholding a municipal living wage ordinance that altered contractual expectations because “\[t\]he power to regulate wages and employment conditions lies clearly within a state’s or a municipality’s police power.”); Lyon v. Agusta S.P.A., 252 F.3d 1078, 1086 (9th Cir. 2001) (“\[T\]he Supreme Court has not blanched when settled economic expectations were upset, as long as the legislature was pursuing a rational policy.”). As with CGA’s equal protection challenge, Long Beach’s hazard-pay requirement meets the rational-basis test that applies to economic regulation affecting purely private contracts. Federal Labor Preemption Finally, CGA argues in its lawsuit that the Long Beach ordinance is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act because it allegedly conflicts with unionized grocery stores’ collective bargaining with unions over pay. This argument misunderstands the relationship between federal labor law and substantive employment rights like those bestowed by hazard-pay ordinances. Under the Machinists doctrine of NLRA preemption, “\[s\]tates are . . . prohibited from imposing additional restrictions on economic weapons of self-help, such as strikes and lockouts, unless such restrictions presumably were contemplated by Congress.”Golden State Transit Corp. v. City of Los Angeles, 475 U.S. 608, 614-615 (1986) (emphasis added, citations omitted). The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the notion that state substantive employment standards—like minimum wages, overtime, severance pay, and other wage premiums—violate this doctrine because they give unionized workers something that they might otherwise have to bargain for. The NLRA regulates the processof collectivebargaining, not the substantive outcomes of that bargaining. Both employers and unions come to the bargaining table against a backdrop of state employment regulation, both favorable to employers (the at-will employment presumption) and to workers (minimum-wage laws). Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U.S. 724, 753-758 (1985) (“Minimum state labor standards affect union and