SB 513 gives current and former California employees—and anyone they authorize in writing—the express right to inspect and receive copies of personnel records an employer keeps that relate to the employee’s performance, including education and training documentation. The bill defines required elements for any employer-held training or education record, sets a 30‑day response window (35 days if agreed in writing), requires employers to retain personnel files for at least three years after employment ends, and permits limited redaction of nonsupervisory names.
The statute creates practical obligations for HR, training, and records management: employers must adopt a process to accept written requests (including a verbal request pathway for an employer-provided form), produce copies at actual reproduction cost, and respect location and compensation protections for current employees. Noncompliance carries a $750 civil penalty, injunctive relief with attorney’s fees, and an infraction classification, while certain records and employees (e.g., criminal investigations, letters of reference, public safety officers) are exempted.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires employers to let employees or their authorized representatives inspect and copy personnel records relating to performance and specifies the content employers must keep for training records (name, provider, dates, core competencies, certifications). Employers must respond within 30 calendar days to written requests and retain personnel files for at least three years after termination.
Who It Affects
All California employers who maintain performance-related personnel files and any third parties who manage HR or training records for them; current and former employees and their representatives; HR, payroll, and training vendors; labor counsel and unions (subject to limits and a CBA exception). Public safety officers and agencies covered by the Information Practices Act are excluded.
Why It Matters
It standardizes what counts as a training record and forces employers to operationalize intake, verification, storage, and disclosure workflows on a fixed timetable. That matters for compliance, litigation discovery, workforce mobility (verification of skills), and collective bargaining negotiations where CBAs can override the statute only if they meet specific terms.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 513 codifies a broad right of access: a current or former employee, or anyone the employee authorizes in writing, can inspect and obtain copies of personnel records an employer maintains that relate to the employee’s performance, plus education and training records and documents about grievances. The bill requires employers who keep training records to include five discrete data points so those records are usefully standardized across workplaces: the employee’s name, the training provider, dates/duration, core competencies (including equipment/software skills), and any certification or qualification that resulted.
To make the right workable, the bill sets procedural rules. Requests must be written or submitted via an employer-provided form; an employer must provide that form on verbal request.
Employers must make records available at reasonable times and locations and produce copies within 30 calendar days of receiving a written request, with a one‑time extension to 35 days if the parties agree in writing. For current employees, inspections and copying must generally occur where the employee reports to work unless both sides agree otherwise, and the employer cannot force the employee to lose pay to review records.SB 513 places practical recordkeeping and retention duties on employers.
They must keep a copy of each employee’s personnel records for at least three years after employment ends and make former-employee files available at the storage location unless the parties agree on another site. The bill permits limited redaction—the employer may remove the names of nonsupervisory employees from records before disclosure—and it enumerates exemptions (criminal-investigation files, letters of reference, preemployment ratings, promotional‑exam materials, public safety officers, and agencies under the Information Practices Act).Enforcement is civil: an employer that doesn’t comply within the statutory timelines faces a $750 penalty recoverable by the employee or the Labor Commissioner; employees can also sue for injunctive relief and recover costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.
Violations are classified as infractions, and employers may raise impossibility of performance as an affirmative defense. The statute also curbs potential abuse: a former employee may only make one request per year, representatives are limited to 50 requests per calendar month, and the right to inspect pauses while a related lawsuit is pending in the trial court.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Training records must include five specific fields: employee name, training provider, duration and date, core competencies (including equipment/software skills), and resulting certification or qualification.
Employers must provide inspection or copies within 30 calendar days of a written request, extendable once to 35 days only by written agreement with the requester.
Employers must retain personnel records for at least three years after an employee’s termination.
Failure to comply within the deadlines exposes employers to a $750 penalty recoverable by the employee or Labor Commissioner; employees can also seek injunctive relief with costs and attorney’s fees, and violations are treated as infractions.
The statute limits requests: a former employee gets one request per year, representatives are capped at 50 requests in a calendar month, and inspection rights are suspended while a related personnel lawsuit is pending.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Right to inspect personnel and training records; required training‑record fields
Subdivision (a) establishes the core right: current and former employees and their written representatives may inspect and obtain copies of employer-held personnel records related to performance, grievances, and education or training. It also prescribes five required elements for any education or training record that an employer maintains, effectively creating a minimum data standard for documenting workforce development and credentialing.
Request format, form availability, and 30‑day production timeline
Subdivision (b) defines how employees must make requests—written or via an employer-provided form—and requires employers to make that form available on verbal request. It sets firm production timelines: inspection and copy delivery within 30 calendar days, with a negotiable written extension not to exceed 35 days. Employers may charge only the actual cost of reproduction for copies.
Location rules and three‑year retention
Subdivision (c) requires employers to retain personnel records for at least three years after an employee leaves and spells out where inspections must occur: current employees can inspect at the workplace (or another agreed location) without losing pay; former employees inspect at the record storage site unless parties agree otherwise, and may receive copies by mail if they pay postage. It also allows employers to accommodate former employees terminated for misconduct by offering inspection at a nearby location or by mail.
Request frequency, verification, and employer designation
These provisions limit repetitive access and set verification mechanics: former employees are entitled to only one request per year; employers can take reasonable steps to verify identity and may designate who receives requests. Subdivision (p) adds a throughput control by prohibiting employers from complying with more than 50 requests in a calendar month from employee representatives, which affects unions and third‑party advocates.
Redaction permission and enumerated exemptions
Subdivision (g) permits employers to redact names of nonsupervisory employees before disclosure. Subdivision (h) lists records excluded from the statute—criminal-investigation files, letters of reference, preemployment and promotional exam materials, public safety officers covered by the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, and agencies governed by the Information Practices Act—clarifying boundaries between disclosure obligations and other confidentiality regimes. Subdivision (i) requires employees of public agencies with independent employee‑relations boards to seek administrative relief there first.
Enforcement, remedies, and affirmative defenses
Subdivision (k) sets a $750 penalty recoverable by the employee or the Labor Commissioner for failure to comply with timelines; subdivision (l) allows injunctive relief plus costs and reasonable attorney’s fees; subdivision (m) classifies violations as infractions and allows employers to assert impossibility of performance (unrelated to violations of law) as an affirmative defense. Together these provisions create both monetary and equitable enforcement tools while limiting criminal exposure.
Interaction with litigation, representative caps, and CBA exception
Subdivision (n) suspends inspection/copy rights while a lawsuit involving personnel matters is pending in the trial court; subdivision (o) defines when a lawsuit ‘relates to a personnel matter.’ Subdivision (p) caps representative‑initiated requests to 50 per calendar month. Subdivision (q) exempts employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement only if that CBA expressly provides for wages/hours/working conditions, a procedure for inspection/copying, premium overtime rates, and a regular rate of pay at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage—conditions that make the CBA exception narrowly available.
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Explore Employment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Current employees: gain routine, statutory access to performance and training records at their workplace without losing pay, improving their ability to review evaluations and correct errors.
- Former employees seeking job or licensing verification: get standardized training fields and a right to copies, aiding mobility and credential validation.
- Employee representatives and unions: can obtain records for grievance and bargaining purposes, subject to the monthly cap on representative requests.
- Employment and labor plaintiffs: benefit from a clear statutory pathway to obtain personnel evidence and a mechanism for injunctive relief plus fees when employers withhold records.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers (HR and payroll operations): must establish written intake processes, produce forms on request, retrieve and mail records, allow inspections during work hours, and store personnel files for at least three years—raising administrative and storage costs.
- Small employers: lack of size exemptions means smaller firms carry the same timelines and retention burdens as larger employers, which may disproportionately strain limited HR resources.
- Training‑record administrators and vendors: must ensure training documentation meets the statute’s required fields and support quick retrieval, potentially requiring system updates or reformatting of records.
- Unions and third‑party representatives: face practical limits on mass requests (50/month cap) and may need to prioritize requests or coordinate across members to stay within the cap.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is balancing employee access to personnel and training information—important for correcting errors, proving qualifications, and enforcing rights—against the administrative, privacy, and legal burdens placed on employers; the statute tightens transparency but relies on modest penalties and procedural limits that may leave both compliance gaps and enforcement uncertainty.
SB 513 walks a narrow line between expanding employee transparency and imposing predictable operational burdens on employers. The statute’s prescriptive approach to training records (five required fields) promotes useful standardization, but it leaves room for disputes about what counts as a training record or a ‘core competency’—contentious in workplaces with informal or on‑the‑job training.
Employers must also reconcile the duty to redact nonsupervisory names with preservation obligations and potential discovery disputes in litigation.
Procedural details will drive compliance costs. The 30‑day production clock and the requirement to provide an employer‑provided form on verbal request create tight response workflows; the law’s limits on copying charges to "actual reproduction" cost raise the question of whether employers must absorb administrative handling or can pass those incremental costs on.
The limits on representative requests and the one‑request‑per‑year rule for former employees curb abusive fishing expeditions, but they also require employers to implement tracking and counting systems that could complicate legitimate access efforts. Finally, the combination of a modest statutory penalty ($750) and injunctive relief with attorney’s fees offers employees enforcement paths but may not produce strong deterrence for systemic noncompliance compared with private damages remedies.
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