CA: Labor code thwarts restoration projects - Volunteers must earn prevailing wage

SF Chronicle ^ | April 5, 2004 | Patrick Hoge

[calcowgirl]

Efforts to restore watershed habitats throughout California, including several in the Bay Area, are threatened because the state is using a largely unknown law to force nonprofit groups to pay prevailing wages to volunteers on their publicly funded projects.

"This serves as a de facto prohibition on volunteerism as perhaps every community project in these dire fiscal times uses some level of volunteer assistance,'' Michael Wellborn, president of the California Watershed Network, wrote in a recent letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The issue came to a boil after the state Department of Industrial Relations, responding to a labor union's complaint, ordered a Redding environmental organization last year to pay $50,000 in fines and back wages for using student volunteers on a publicly funded restoration project. The Sacramento Watersheds Action Group is appealing that ruling.

[calcowgirl]

It never ends

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[jocon307]

"It never ends"

Eating their own, bttt

[calcowgirl]

Eating their own, bttt

With taxpayer money :-(

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[scan59]

Look for the union label.....

[Amerigomag]

"We're tied by what the law tells us to do,'' said Rick Rice, assistant secretary of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, which includes the Department of Industrial Relations.

Here's the big lie that came out of Rice's mouth

Rice knows damn well that the "law", passed by the legislature, didn't tell him to do it. The regulation that the Labor and Workforce Development Agency promulgated did.

There can be big differences between a law and the regulations that flow from that law. In this case a pro union, government agency promulgated a regulation contrary to the letter and the spirit of the law and got away with it as they often do. Now that same agency wails that it's not their fault. The devil (law) made them do it.

[tubebender]

Here is the local take on this Wailing and Whining

And as someone said it's taxpayer money...

[uglybiker]

You can't tax volunteers.

[tubebender]

There is no group in California that eats at the public trough more often than this group RCAA They started as a contactor for PG&e in the 80s doing weather stripping now they take up untold search pages on Google. One of their managers is now the Mayor of Eureka and their budget is in the millions of taxpayer money...

[KC_for_Freedom]

You can't tax volunteers.

And the state cannot force volunteer organizations to pay their volunteers. This would be a way to destroy every service organization that exists. How about those Assistant Scoutmasters, they should be paid minimum wage? ( Actually troops can't afford to pay what these volunteers are really worth, but the state cannot get into this game.) This smells like something Ayn Rand would write about if she were not so against volunteering in the first place.

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!