California Apprenticeship Regulations Upheld

According to the council, its amendments were meant to “ensure that the work performed by apprentices on public works is a genuine part of their training program…and conversely that apprentices will not be used as a source of cheap labor for work processes that are not part of their structured and approved training program.”

In exchange for training apprentices, contractors are authorized to pay these apprentices a special wage that’s lower than the journeyworker-level prevailing wage rate. Further, amended regulations modify existing language to ensure that apprentices are performing work that will help them advance to the journeyworker-level status.

The employer associations, including the Associated General Contractors of California, the Building Industry Association of Southern California, and the Millwright Employers Association, argued that the California Apprenticeship Council is only allowed to establish standards for minimum wages, maximum hours and working conditions for apprentices and is not authorized to put forward amended regulations, namely implementing the prevailing wage law governing the employment of apprentices on public works projects: Labor Code Section 1777.5 promotes apprenticeship on public works by requiring contractors who hire workers in any “apprenticeable craft or trade” to also hire a certain number of registered apprentices in the same craft or trade.

Prior to the Council’s amendments, “Apprentices employed on public works can only be assigned to perform work of the craft or trade to which the apprentice is registered. Work of the craft or trade consists of job duties normally assigned to journeymen in the apprenticeable occupation.” Disputes involved public works contractors and if they could select apprentices based on the job duties normally assigned to journey workers—or skilled tradesmen—in the same occupation or by the work processes set forth in the standards governing the training program. 

According to MetNews, the Council argued that the amendments were meant to “ensure that the work performed by apprentices on public works is a genuine part of their training program…and conversely that apprentices will not be used as a source of cheap labor for work processes that are not part of their structured and approved training program.”

“The challenged regulations control the type of work in which apprentices may engage, requiring contractors to assign work according to the work processes set forth in the apprentice’s program standards,” Judge Peter A. Krause wrote to a three-judge panel, and Law360 reported. “Petitioners summarily assert that the challenged regulations do not address working conditions, but fail to explain how they reach this conclusion, and we are not obliged to develop the argument for them.”

To conclude, the panel–Judge Krause Elena J. Duarte and Shama Hakim Mesiwala–said, “The council is not improperly defining (or redefining) journeyworker occupations under the guise of defining what is ‘apprenticeable.’ The new regulations have no effect on how the craft or trade of a journeyworker is determined, or on the work processes in which they may be employed.”

The case is Associated General Contractors of California et al. v. Department of Industrial Relations et al., case number C098009, in the Court of Appeal of the State of California for the Third Appellate District.