The issue drew dozens of public employees to a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, where they urged support for legislation that would set stronger statewide standards for telework and give individual agencies more room to decide when in-person work is necessary.

The Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee advanced the bill on a 4-1 vote. The measure would not directly block Newsom’s return-to-office directive, which the governor has said is intended to improve accountability, strengthen government services and help revive downtown Sacramento.

Instead, the proposal by Assemblymember Alex Lee, D-Milpitas, would require state agencies to evaluate telework options and justify in writing when employees must come into the office. It also would direct the Department of General Services to create a public dashboard showing the costs, savings and other effects of state telework programs.

Lee and supporters pointed to a 2024 state audit that found remote work could save California money while reducing pollution and improving productivity and employee morale. Supporters also argued that forcing office workers back to cubicles is not a responsible solution for struggling downtown economies.

“As we grapple with the affordability crisis, we want to make sure that our downtowns and urban cores are not places where workers have to be, but where workers want to be,” Lee told the committee. “It’s not fair to shackle our office workers to be the entire bedrock for downtowns.”

The debate has implications across California, including for state employees who live in Southern California and the Inland Empire and may face long commutes to regional offices or state facilities. Telework became widespread in state government during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it did in many private workplaces.

Newsom began pushing state workers back to offices in 2024, first requiring two in-office days per week. His administration later increased the requirement to four days. A four-day mandate had been expected to take effect last year for some workers, but the governor delayed it for certain unions during labor talks as part of an effort to reduce payroll costs.

State employee unions, with the exception of those representing public safety workers, are backing Lee’s bill. Supporters include SEIU Local 1000, the largest state worker union, which is currently negotiating a contract with the Newsom administration. According to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database, the union has contributed at least $2 million to current California lawmakers.

At Wednesday’s hearing, workers said many state jobs can be done effectively from home and that departments have already invested heavily in digital systems. One employee with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation said the department had spent years and millions of dollars moving away from paper-based work and argued that pesticide evaluations do not require a permanent office presence.

In a separate development affecting public employees, California health plans serving government workers will not be required to expand coverage for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. A provision that would have required CalPERS to provide the benefit to its 1.3 million members was removed from legislation this week after the pension fund and a health insurer warned it could raise premiums and cost taxpayers about $187 million annually.

Original source: CalMatters

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Assembly Bill 1751, carried by Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, a Fullerton Democrat whose district includes parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties, would remove certain regulatory barriers for townhouse construction. The measure is intended to speed approval of tightly built, multistory homes, a housing type often seen as a middle ground between single-family houses and large apartment projects.

In exchange for that streamlined approval, developers would have to pay construction workers at least $28 an hour. That is well above California’s current statewide minimum wage of $16.90.

But the proposed wage floor has drawn fierce opposition from the State Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents skilled trades such as electricians, plumbers and sheet metal workers. The council argues the bill could weaken higher wage standards already in place for many union workers on public or publicly supported projects.

At the center of the dispute is the concept of “prevailing wage,” a government-set pay rate that applies to many publicly funded construction projects, including a number of affordable housing developments. Prevailing wages are calculated through surveys of what workers in specific trades earn in different regions. Because union contracts often cover large numbers of workers, union pay scales can help establish those prevailing rates.

Quirk-Silva has insisted that her bill would not alter those standards.

“It does not replace prevailing wage,” she said during a tense Assembly floor debate earlier this month. “It does not undercut prevailing wage. This bill leaves prevailing wage exactly where it stands in current law.”

The building trades remain unconvinced. Their concern is partly technical: while the bill says California regulators could not use the new $28 wage standard when calculating state prevailing wages, federal officials conduct their own surveys and set their own rates for federally supported projects. Union leaders worry that if enough townhouse construction jobs are paid at $28 an hour, that lower rate could influence federal prevailing wage calculations.

Their broader objection is about precedent. For years, the building trades have pushed back against housing bills that ease development rules unless they include strong labor protections, such as prevailing wage requirements or “skilled and trained” workforce mandates that favor graduates of apprenticeship programs, most of whom are union members.

AB 1751 offers a different model: a required minimum wage that is far lower than what many skilled union tradespeople already earn.

Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, said that approach could become the new standard in future housing legislation. If lawmakers begin treating a construction minimum wage as the labor concession needed to win support for development streamlining, he said, “that becomes the new go-to.”

On the other side of the fight are California’s unionized carpenters, who support the proposed wage standard. The rivalry between the carpenters and the building trades has become a recurring feature of housing debates in Sacramento.

The two labor groups clashed over a similar proposal last year, when Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and longtime ally of the carpenters, sought to include a residential construction wage floor of $28 to $40 an hour in a budget bill near the end of the fiscal year. The carpenters argued then, as now, that most workers building housing in California are not represented by unions, except on high-rise projects that require more specialized labor. A higher minimum wage, they said, would improve standards for those nonunion workers.

The building trades reacted strongly to that proposal. Union members packed a budget hearing to denounce the idea, saying it would mark a retreat from California’s traditional labor standards. One representative compared the measure to “Jim Crow” laws. The proposal was ultimately dropped after several labor-friendly Democrats expressed concern.

This year’s version has gone through a more public legislative process, though opponents still argue it has moved too quickly. When AB 1751 was introduced in February, it dealt only with townhouse regulations. The wage language was added in late April before the bill’s second committee hearing.

Quirk-Silva’s staff declined to make her available for an interview, citing personal family matters. On the Assembly floor, she said the timing was partly affected by serious health issues involving staff and family members.

Since the wage language was added, debate over the bill has centered almost entirely on labor. That is notable because the measure would also exempt townhouse projects from environmental review and remove local elected city councils and planning boards from parts of the approval process. In past years, that kind of land-use shift would likely have triggered a major Capitol battle on its own.

But California’s housing politics have changed rapidly. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law exempting most urban infill housing developments from environmental litigation, reducing some of the political shock around proposals that limit local review.

During an Assembly floor vote last month, Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat, called the wage issue the “900-pound gorilla.” Like several Democrats, Ward said he generally supported the housing goals of the bill but remained concerned about unanswered questions over how the $28 rate might interact with existing labor standards.

The bill needed 41 votes in the 80-member Assembly to advance to the Senate. It passed with 47.

Quirk-Silva’s office attempted to address the prevailing wage concern by writing into the bill that the California Department of Industrial Relations could not use the $28 townhouse wage when calculating state prevailing wage rates. Those rates are based on the most common pay for each type of work in each region.

The building trades say that does not solve the federal issue. For example, the current federal prevailing wage for a residential roofer in Sacramento is $46.73 an hour, plus benefits. Federal officials base those numbers on the most common wage paid in an area, or on the regional average if no single rate covers at least 30% of surveyed workers.

Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for unions affiliated with the building trades, warned at an April hearing that federal officials would not be bound by the California bill’s language.

“The federal government won’t give a rat’s ass about what this bill says,” Wetch said. “And they will set the prevailing wage rate for all the crafts at $28.”

Kevin Duncan, an economist at Colorado State University Pueblo who has studied how prevailing wage rules affect construction costs, said the trades’ concern is not baseless. In a smaller market with limited union presence, he said, a large number of contractors paying workers exactly $28 an hour could potentially influence a wage survey.

“That would be the prevailing rate — and with zero benefits,” Duncan said.

Supporters of AB 1751 say that scenario is unlikely. They argue the bill applies to a specific category of townhouse construction and would not generate enough federally relevant wage data to substantially change prevailing wage rates. They also contend that few residential roofers work on federal public works projects in Sacramento or elsewhere in California.

Most roofers on privately funded residential projects are nonunion and many earn less than $28 an hour, said Danny Curtin, director of the California Council of Carpenters. Raising the floor for those workers, he argued, should not be portrayed as a threat to higher-paid union trades.

The claim that a $28 minimum wage would pull other workers’ pay down “defies comprehension,” Curtin said.

Original source: CalMatters

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The U.S. House moved urgently to head off the looming nationwide rail strike on Wednesday, passing a bill that would bind companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached in September but rejected by some of the 12 unions involved. The measure passed by a vote of 290-137 and now heads to the Senate.

If approved there, it will be signed by President Joe Biden, who urged the Senate to act swiftly. “Without the certainty of a final vote to avoid a shutdown this week, railroads will begin to halt the movement of critical materials like chemicals to clean our drinking water as soon as this weekend,” Biden said. “Let me say that again: without action this week, disruptions to our auto supply chains, our ability to move food to tables, and our ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries will begin.” Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation have warned that halting rail service would cause a $2 billion per day hit to the economy.

The bill would impose a compromise labor agreement brokered by the Biden administration that was ultimately voted down by four of the 12 unions representing more than 100,000 employees at large freight rail carriers. The unions have threatened to strike if an agreement can’t be reached before a Dec. 9 deadline. Lawmakers from both parties expressed reservations about overriding the negotiations. And the intervention was particularly difficult for Democratic lawmakers who have traditionally sought to align themselves with the politically powerful labor unions that criticized Biden’s move to intervene in the contract dispute and block a strike.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to that concern by adding a second vote Wednesday that would add seven days of paid sick leave per year for rail workers covered under the agreement. However, it will take effect only if the Senate goes along and passes both measures. The House passed the sick leave measure as well, but by a much narrower margin, 221-207, as Republicans overwhelmingly opposed it, indicating that prospects for passage of that add-on are slim in the evenly divided Senate. The call for more paid sick leave was a major sticking point in the talks. The railroads say the unions have agreed in negotiations over the decades to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits.

The head of the Association of American Railroads trade group said Tuesday that railroads would consider adding paid sick time in the future, but said that change should wait for a new round of negotiations instead of being added now, near the end of three years of contract talks. The unions maintain that railroads can easily afford to add paid sick time at a time when they are recording record profits. Several of the big railroads involved in these contract talks reported more than $1 billion profit in the third quarter. “Quite frankly, the fact that paid leave is not part of the final agreement between railroads and labor is, in my opinion, obscene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “It should be there and I hope it will be there at the end of this process.” Most rail workers don’t receive any paid sick time but they do have short-term disability benefits that kick in after as little as four days and can replace some of their income for a year or more.

Rail workers do receive vacation and personal leave days, but workers say it’s difficult to use those for illnesses because they must typically be approved far ahead of time. Republicans also voiced support for the measure to block the strike, but criticized the Biden administration for turning to Congress to “step in to fix the mess.” “They’ve retreated in failure and they kicked this problem to Congress for us to decide,” said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo. Republicans criticized Pelosi’s decision to add the sick leave bill to the mix. They said the Biden administration’s own special board of arbitrators recommended higher wages to compensate the unions for not including sick time in its recommendations. “Why do we even have the system set up the way it is if Congress is going to come in and make changes to all of the recommendations?” Graves said.

Pelosi sought to position Democrats and the Biden administration as defenders of unions and slammed the rail companies, saying they’ve slashed jobs, increased worker hours and cut corners on safety. But she said Congress needed to intervene. “Families wouldn’t be able to buy groceries or life-saving medications because it would be even more expensive and perishable goods would spoil before reaching shelves,” Pelosi said. The compromise agreement that was supported by the railroads and a majority of the unions provides for 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses retroactive to 2020 along with one additional paid leave day.

The raises would be the biggest rail workers have received in more than four decades. Workers would have to pay a larger share of their health insurance costs, but their premiums would be capped at 15% of the total cost of the insurance plan. The agreement did not resolve workers’ concerns about schedules that make it hard to take a day off and the lack of more paid sick time. On several past occasions, Congress has intervened in labor disputes by enacting legislation to delay or prohibit railway and airline strikes.

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