As Gov. Gavin Newsom aims to streamline housing construction as part of the state’s budget, California legislators are wrestling with a new proposal that could tie up negotiations at the last minute.
In the latest iteration of a budget bill introduced June 24, lawmakers proposed a new set of minimum wages for housing construction workers that would be significantly lower than previously floated, The Orange County Register reported. The issue at hand is what development projects are required to adhere to the state-determined prevailing wages for construction workers.
As it stands, the state defines prevailing wages by occupation and location to determine a figure close to what union workers make. Residential construction, however, is “a virtually non-union industry,” said Danny Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, the state’s carpenter’s union. “You have the ability to give those people a substantial — a modest, but substantial and important — raise,” he said, noting the new wages would be higher than they are now, albeit not as high as they could be.
In the case of a carpenter working on a residential project in Oakland, the state-set prevailing wage would equate to at least $99 per hour including benefits.
But the new $40-an-hour minimum wage schedule doesn’t include everyone across the Bay Area; less skilled or experienced workers would garner a minimum of $27 per hour. For housing projects of 25 units or fewer, developers would be exempt entirely from paying the prevailing wage.
The State Building and Construction Trades Council, a body of construction labor unions that has frequently been at odds with the carpenters union, blasted the proposal in a letter to lawmakers.
“This proposal is a wage grab of construction workers’ wages disguised in an ‘affordable housing bill,’” Chris Hannan, president of the council, said in the letter, according to the Register. “We urge you to abandon any pursuit of this harmful and unprecedented proposal, which would devastate construction workers.” The proposal similarly earned jeers from lawmakers who insisted they “didn’t come to Sacramento to cut people’s wages.”
Debate around the bill is ongoing as the legislature looks to firm up and approve a $321 billion spending plan before Tuesday’s start of the fiscal year.
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