Our View: Lawyers may lurk under these sheets

Don't liberals insist that the government "get out of our bedrooms?" Not when it comes to hotel bedrooms in California.

Senate Bill 432 is authored by state Sen. Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles. As written, the bill would create "new occupational safety and health standards for all hotels, motels and other similar transient lodging establishments in California." It would mandate the "use of fitted sheets ... on the bottom sheet on all beds" at such lodging. And it would mandate the "use of long-handled tools," such as mops, to reduce stooping "to clean bathroom floors, walls, tubs, toilets and other bathroom surfaces."

The new regulation is needed, supporters contend, because housekeepers' health is jeopardized by using the flat sheets. "A 2009 report in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine found that housekeepers have higher (7.87 per 100) injury rates than other hotel workers," the Los Angeles Times reported.

Although commonly referred to as the "fitted sheet bill," that description isn't accurate, said Greg Hayes, Sen. De Leon's spokesman. "The bill will undergo significant overhaul in the coming weeks. We have some amendments coming. We wanted to work with the hotels."

The California Hotel & Lodging Association pointed out that the medical study didn't even mention fitted sheets as culprit in the injuries. And it charged it would cost up to $50 million to replace the regular sheets with fitted sheets. Hayes said the high number is "a bunch of nonsense" and that De Leon and other legislators are working on the bill to "find a way to implement it without added costs," within the hotels' economic structure.

He said the major hotels are in favor of working for a compromise bill. But the association remains adamant against any bill. And he said that, as only about 10 percent of housekeepers are unionized, including the sheet rules in future contracts wouldn't help much.

"They have never met with us," Randi Knott, vice president of government and legal relations at the association, told us of De Leon and his staff. "We'd be happy to sit down with the senator. " She added that De Leon "did commit to amending the tool use, leaving it to the discretion of the housekeeper. We haven't seen it yet." But the change could be agreeable to the association. However, she added, "We're not privy to an amendment on fitted sheets."

Knott also contended that "there's absolutely no proof fitted sheets would reduce injuries." Moreover, she said, unlike flat sheets, fitted sheets cannot be pressed and folded by a machine. Mandating fitted sheets "would shift this perceived burden from housekeepers to laundry workers."

She said S.B. 432's main beneficiary would not be housekeepers, but trial lawyers filing occupational-injury lawsuits. Indeed, a major backer of the bill is the Consumer Attorneys of California (formerly called the California Trial Lawyers Association).

We believe that this bill, even improved by amendment, is another example of nanny state meddling in private business and ought to be opposed. No other state has anything like it. Existing regulations, implemented by Cal/OSHA, already provide adequate protection.

The bill also is another argument for a part-time Legislature. The Legislature long ago should have gone home, slipped between the sheets — flat or fitted — to take a nap.