A proposal that would have set a first-of-its-kind minimum wage for certain housing construction workers in California is dead for the year in the face of fierce opposition from a major construction union coalition.
Assembly Bill 1751 would fast-track the approval of new townhouses. In exchange for using the law, developers would have been required to pay their workers at least $28 per hour.
In a hearing before the state Senate Housing Committee, Oakland Democrat Buffy Wicks, a co-author of the bill, reluctantly agreed to strip out the minimum wage “based on the staunch opposition to this change by the Building Trades.”
Sen. Jesse Arreguín, the committee’s chair, ultimately made the stripping of the wage measure a condition of his approval. The Berkeley Democrat vowed to pursue a policy that would “establish some minimum floor” in the coming months that would be acceptable to all parties, including the the State Building and Construction Trades Council.
The council, known colloquially in Sacramento as “the trades,” is a union coalition made up of electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers and other skilled trades. It has rallied against the measure since it was introduced in April, arguing that it would undermine federally determined “prevailing wage” rates — even higher minimum wage levels required for publicly funded projects.
The state’s unionized carpenters, a regular political foe of the trades on housing policy, disputed that characterization, arguing that residential construction workers rarely work on jobs where pay is determined by federal public work rules. The bill is sponsored by the New California Coalition, a centrist political advocacy group composed largely of business groups.
After the wage provision was pulled, the trades — whose members showed up in droves to the hearing — went neutral on the bill.
The bill ultimately passed through the Senate Housing Committee, but the carpenters were irate at the stripping of the labor language — feelings directed in part at the chair.
Despite Arreguín’s promise to pursue a future compromise, “(I) don’t think he understands the hard part…his lack of leadership,” said Danny Curtin, director of the California Council of Carpenters, in a text message.
A number of Democratic members of the committee expressed similar, if less pointed, frustration.
“We do have a segment of folks who do need to make more than just the minimum wage,” said Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat.
Wicks ended her testimony on a similar note.
“The idea to raise the floor from $16 to $28 seems like it should be an easy thing for us to do in this legislative body as Democrats,” she said.
Even with the wage language jettisoned, trouble may lie ahead for AB 1751. Another Democrat on the committee, Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, noted that the changes made today did not address her concerns over the bill’s circumvention of local land-use authority. Durazo chairs the Local Government committee, where the bill heads next week.
