[env-trinity] PRESS DEMOCRAT -Unions back pay rule change: Volunteers would be allowed to work for free on habitat restoration

[Tom Stokely]

Unions back pay rule change:  Volunteers would be allowed to work for free on habitat restoration 
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."













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