2012 5
He’s Been Admonished for Recent Vetoes, but CA Gov Brown Has Supported Many of Labor’s 2012 Legislative Items
California Governor Jerry Brown recently came under fire from members of the organized labor community for vetoing a domestic workers rights bill that would have provided enhanced protections to roughly 200,000 caregivers and nannies in that industry. He also vetoed a farm workers bill as well as 32 other pieces of legislation moved through the Democratic-controlled legislature.
But that hasn’t made 2012 a failure for California organized labor, not in the slightest. Brown did right by the Building and Construction Trades in the state, putting supportive pen to supportive paper on a number of bills that deal with infrastructure, contracting and green technology investment.
Budget uncertainty caused Gov. Brown to veto some bills that would have helped the construction sector as well, though overall the year is being viewed as a success:
Here are the most important bills, sponsored or supported by the Building Trades, to receive the Governor’s signature.
AB 1446 (Feuer) Enables local and regional agencies to accelerate transportation infrastructure projects in Los Angeles County, creating an estimated 166,000 Building Trades jobs in the region, by allowing the MTA to extend a local tax subject to voter approval.
AB 1565 (Fuentes) Weeds out bad contractors by requiring school districts to prequalify all general, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing contractors on state-funded school projects costing over $1 million.
AB 2219 (Knight) Helps identify bad roofing contractors by eliminating the sunset date on a law that requires roofers to maintain workers compensation insurance, even if the contractor lacks employees.
AB 2580 (Furutani) Increases contractor accountability on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Job Order Contracting (JOC) bidding procedure, and extends the sunset for its use.
AB 2677 (Swanson) Enhances workers’ health and pension funds by clarifying that increased contributions set forth in a collective bargaining agreement are not a violation of Prevailing Wage.
SB 1128 (Padilla) Enhances the green energy technology manufacturing industry by adding “advanced manufacturing” to the sales and use tax financing program to help increase California based manufacturing.
SB 1509 (Simitian) Extends the authorization for school and community college districts to use design build construction through 2020. It encourages PLA use by allowing a Prevailing Wage enforcement fee to be waived if a PLA applies to a project
Couple these legislative successes with signals that High-Speed Rail will be brought to fruition and CA building tradesmen and women have a lot to cheer for.
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