By HOWARD FINE

Staff Reporter

Halfway through the legislative session, the state’s business lobby has managed to block a number of anti-business measures and is confident that it can call on Gov. Pete Wilson to help dodge most of the rest.

The victories have come largely at the expense of the state’s labor interests, which have been pushing a broad agenda aimed at increasing workers’ wages and insurance benefits.

Likely stalled for the rest of the session are bills that would have granted more than $1.5 billion in increased workers’ compensation benefits to injured workers, given employees more choice of health plans and more latitude in taking family or medical leave, and raised the minimum wage.

Other bills, like reinstatement of overtime pay after eight hours and hikes in what employers must pay in state unemployment and disability taxes, could still pass the Legislature, but will likely face vetoes from Wilson.

“We’ve been fairly successful in stopping anti-business bills,” said Fred Main, vice president of the California Chamber of Commerce. “It’s an election year and there are a number of moderate Democrats especially in the state Assembly who are trying to make sure they don’t antagonize the business vote.”

Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers Association, echoed Main’s view.

“There is a lot of legislation out there that we are not happy with,” Stewart said. “But we’re able to deal with legislators on these bills because they understand the pressures businesses face and the need for California to remain competitive. That’s why I think we’ll be OK this year in stopping most of the bills.”

Business lobbyists said there remain a number of bills that pose a threat. Among those are measures that would make health maintenance organizations liable for treatment mistakes, grant part-time and contract workers the same wage and benefit rates as full-time workers, and pave the way for more stringent anti-pollution laws to protect the health of children.

Labor lobbyists are hoping to capitalize on the message sent by the strong labor turnout in this month’s primary to push through these and other key bills.

Tom Rankin, president of the California Labor Federation, said labor plans to reintroduce the minimum wage hike in a Senate bill next month, after the budget passes.

“What we’ve seen over the last several years is a growing income disparity,” Rankin said. “It really is a pretty depressing story. Bringing back the minimum wage, restoring daily overtime, giving higher workers’ compensation benefits and giving employees more health coverage would take small steps to help remedy that.”

Rankin said he is not optimistic that Wilson would sign any of these bills.

“We have seen our social insurance programs, from health care to workers’ compensation to unemployment insurance, decline under Republican governors in the past 16 years and Wilson has been the worst in this regard,” he said. “I can’t imagine he is going to change much in his last months in office.”

Ron Lowe, a spokesman for Gov. Wilson, defended the governor’s track record by pointing to the current statewide economic resurgence.

“We’ve worked long and hard to restore the state’s business climate. California is now creating more jobs than any other state in the nation and these are good-paying jobs,” said Lowe. “The governor has vetoed and will continue to veto legislation that hurts our competitiveness. We do not want to see California’s economy return to the depths of the early 1990s. That means that job-killing measures like minimum-wage hikes and other measures aimed to derail the economy do not become law in California.”

Besides working to block the labor agenda, the business lobby has sponsored a few bills of its own, with mixed results.

One measure, which would have shielded computer software manufacturers and major corporations that use the software from liability for failures from the so-called “millenium bug,” died in committee.

Another business-backed measure, which would place a 10-year prohibition on new state or local taxes on the Internet, passed the Senate Committee on Revenue and Taxation last week. It now goes to the Senate Local Government Committee.