Independent Roofing Contractors v. Department of Industrial Relations

Independent Roofing Contractors v. Department of Industrial Relations

Opinion

 [*348]  [**552]   California law requires that workers on public works projects be accorded the same working conditions and wages that prevail in private industry. The California Department of Industrial Relations (Department) is charged with determining what wages are prevailing for specific  [*349]  types of work at any given place and time; its determinations are binding on the parties to public construction contracts. Here, two associations of building contractors bring various constitutional challenges to the Department's decision to delete a particular wage  [***2]  determination. They complain that the Department's policies and the statutory scheme effectively allow the parties to private collective bargaining agreements to dictate the wages that will be paid on public projects, regardless whether those wages are actually prevailing. The trial court rejected their contentions. We affirm.

 [**553]  FACTS 

On October 5, 1989, the business manager of the Craft Tenders Union Local 343 of Vallejo, California, requested that the Department determine prevailing wage rates for craft tender employees. Before the request was made, there had been no such classification for prevailing wage purposes. In support of the request, Local 343 submitted a copy of its standard collective bargaining agreement. The agreement described craft tenders as unskilled or semiskilled construction workers who "tend" skilled construction crafts, or in other words, perform unskilled cleanup, material handling, and other essential but menial tasks necessary to assist skilled workers. In January 1990, in response to the Department's request, Local 343 provided additional information, including the number of workers covered in each county, a list of signatory contractors, and the names [***3]  and locations of projects on which craft tenders were employed. In May 1990, based on the information submitted to it and "other available information," the Department published prevailing wage rates for the craft tender classification.

On July 5, 1990, the Northern California District Council of Laborers (Laborers) filed a petition to review the craft tender determination. The Laborers claimed the craft tender determination had been made in violation of certain provisions of the California Code of Regulations, and that the classification performed work historically performed by laborers. On July 26, the Department denied the petition, noting that the Department avoided involvement in jurisdictional disputes between crafts, and that the specific designation of classifications to be used on a particular public work was the responsibility of the awarding body, not the Department.

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