By Lynn La | CalMatters
To spur more housing in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature carved out notable exceptions to California’s 54-year-old environmental review law as part of the state budget deal they hammered out last week. But rolling back parts of the landmark statute might have not happened had it not been for one particular construction union.
As CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang and Ben Christopher explain, the California Conference of Carpenters worked with Democratic lawmakers to push the law’s exemption for certain apartment developments by supporting a proposal that would have allowed developers to pay residential construction workers — who are mostly all non-union — a lower minimum wage than those required for publicly subsidized projects relatively on par with union-level pay.
The proposal was ultimately scrapped after drawing severe criticism from the influential State Building and Construction Trades Council, which argued that it would undercut pay standards. But the rift between the two groups highlighted the Carpenters’ alternative approach to view non-union workers not as competition, but as prospective members worth protecting. Having the support of the Carpenters, if not the Trades, has been crucial for lawmakers seeking changes to state housing policy.
- Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and author of several housing bills: “It changed everything. It created more space for more dialogue and less of the ‘my way or the highway’ approach.”