April 20, 2004
By CAROL BENFELL
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Labor unions Monday joined environmental groups in calling for
the repeal of a law that requires full pay for volunteers on state-funded
habitat restoration projects.
"If there are projects that require skilled labor, those
folks should be paid a prevailing wage. We are certainly not trying
to come between volunteers and community groups who have been
doing great work for decades," said Jim Lewis, communications
director with the state Building and Construction Trades Council,
an umbrella organization of 14 trades and crafts unions.
Environmentalists welcomed the support.
"That's great. I'm thrilled. This is exactly the kind of
support we were hoping for," said Michael Wellborn, president
of the board of directors of the California Watershed Network,
a statewide organization.
"It makes sense that volunteers can provide support for critical
community projects and that labor will obtain an appropriate wage
for their skills," Wellborn said.
The 2001 law expanded the kinds of projects that are considered
"public works" and for which prevailing wages must be
paid. Hundreds of state projects and millions of dollars in bond
money for environmental projects, authorized by voters as Propositions
40 and 50, are in limbo until the law is amended.
That has also put local projects on hold, including a 4-year effort
to restore habitat along Green Valley Creek, a push to rid the
Russian River of invasive Arundo reed, and a hands-on environmental
program for Salmon Creek schoolchildren.
"We can make the money go so much farther with volunteers,"
said Cam Parry, head of a Forestville group that obtained $94,000
in state grants to restore three miles of Green Valley Creek.
"This would have been a million dollar project if the state
had done it."
A bill to amend the 2001 law has been introduced by Assemblywoman
Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and goes to its first committee hearing
today.
The state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which oversees
the Department of Industrial Relations, is also trying to craft
a new law, which could be given to Hancock to use or inserted
in another bill.
The agency's assistant secretary, Rick Rice, said he hopes a new
law could take effect by July 1, either by tacking the proposed
new law onto an existing budget bill or by persuading legislators
to designate it an urgency measure. Otherwise, the law wouldn't
take effect until Jan. 1, 2005, he said.
"I think now that workers' comp is off state, this issue
will take center stage," Rice said. "A legislative change
has to be made."
The building trades council is working with both Hancock and the
labor agency, Lewis said.
"We have great hope for a resolution," Lewis said. "It
has never been the intention of the unions that comprise the building
trades to stop the use of volunteers on these projects."
