News of the Arroyo
Title: | California has a message for volunteers: Get lost! |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2004-04-06 |
Summary: | April 6, 2004 - It could be the end of volunteerism as we know it. The Sacramento Bee covers an obscure labor regulation that is now being enforced to prevent non-profit groups doing good works like watershed projects from using volunteers. It's an incredible slap at public involvment of the sort that has fueled Arroyo Seco improvement projects for decades. |
Author: | Daniel Weintraub |
Publication: | Sacramento Bee |
Content: | With governments all across California pinched for funds, you would think that public-spirited people who want to volunteer to help in their community would be welcomed with open arms. But this is California, and 15 years of laws and regulations have reached their inevitable tipping point at the worst possible moment. The state has now essentially outlawed the use of volunteers on public projects. The Department of Industrial Relations, citing state law and its mandate to prevent the exploitation of workers, has ruled that volunteers in most cases cannot be used on projects receiving public funds. The department late last year fined a Sacramento Valley nonprofit group $33,000, in part because it used student volunteers to help clear a stream bed. The fallout from that decision is now rippling through the state, with conservation and education groups among the first to realize that their missions might be threatened by the ruling. The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing its response, but top officials seem to think their hands are tied by the law. Legislators who put those laws into place say they want to undo some of their unintended consequences. But for now, state grants to groups that use volunteers are screeching to a halt. The problem has its roots in the decades-old prevailing wage law, first adopted to prevent nonunion contractors from underbidding union shops on public works projects. More recent law and rulings on what constitutes a volunteer, and a broadened definition of publics works, prompted the state to start cracking down on nonprofits that have the temerity to try to save the taxpayers money. The precedent-setting case in this field came and went in 1999 with little fanfare, except among labor groups that monitor such things. The dispute involved the Lewis Center for Earth Sciences, run by the Partnership for Academic Excellence in the desert town of Apple Valley outside Los Angeles. The state had given $2 million to the city of Apple Valley, which then joined with the Excellence foundation to build the science center. While the nonprofit foundation was running the project and contracting with the construction companies, the science center was still a public work, the state ruled, and prevailing wages had to be paid. The science center case had nothing to do with volunteers. But it was cited two years later when the Santee Sports Council in San Diego County tried to use city grant funds to renovate a local ball field. The first phase of the project, involving some aerating, seeding and fertilizing, was done by student volunteers from a landscaping class at West Hills High School. The state ruled that the project was a public work, and that everyone involved had to be paid prevailing wages. The public works precedent was later applied to the Dunsmuir Garden Club\'s effort to develop a park in that tiny Northern California city, and to the Lobrero Theater Foundation\'s renovation work in Santa Barbara. But the issue came to a head when the Sacramento Watersheds Action Group used state grant money last year to rehabilitate Sulpher Creek, in Redding. The group used some students from nearby Shasta College to dig in the creek bed, clear bushes, repair culverts and install rock beds to prevent erosion in some gullies. The students earned course credit for classes in watershed restoration. Complaints from a local labor group prompted an investigation. The state inquired and concluded that 60 workers - including those who volunteered - should have been paid between $12 and $50 a hour for their labor. Fines and back wages were assessed. The state says the regulations on volunteers on public projects date to a 1989 law. Volunteer work can only be used when the work is performed entirely by unpaid people, the work is on a project used primarily by community organizations, the work will not have an \"adverse impact\" on employment and the work has been approved by the director of Industrial Relations as meeting all of the above requirements. In other words, a bureaucratic and political minefield. But that law was rarely enforced until the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, who was close to organized labor, came into power in 1999. Now the Redding case has the environmental community in an uproar because those groups depend on volunteer work to make their public dollars go further. Enlisting volunteers also invests the community in the projects and, when students are involved, can be a way to teach children about nature. \"The work of these watershed groups empowers citizens, captures the imagination and passion of students, collects and expresses the wisdom of our seniors, and weaves our communities together,\" wrote Michael Wellborn, president of the California Watershed Network, in a letter to Schwarzenegger. \"I cannot think of anything more stifling to these efforts than the loss of volunteerism.\" Legislators are vowing to exempt watershed projects from the antivolunteer requirement. But this problem goes well beyond that narrow interest. The goal of protecting union wages against more cost-effective competition is now threatening to shut down volunteerism on public projects across the board and throughout the state. Have we gone mad? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the Writer --------------------------- Reach Daniel Weintraub at (916) 321-1914 or dweintraub@sacbee.com. Readers can see his daily Weblog at www.sacbee.com/insider Back columns: www.sacbee.com/weintraub -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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