State high court clarifies meaning of ‘public works’

People hired by a government contractor to sort waste for Los Angeles County performed public work and are therefore covered by California's minimum wage laws for government financed infrastructure workers, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

California Supreme Court Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote the unanimous opinion. The court aimed to clarify the types of labor that fall under the state's definition of "public works" for the purposes of determining whether the workers performing that labor are entitled to the prevailing wage -- the state's minimum wage provision that usually applies to those employed on public works. Kaanaana v. Barrett Business Services, Inc., S253458 (filed Mar. 29, 2021).

But in a concurring opinion, Justice Leondra Kruger said the case also illustrates an issue with Section 1720 of the state Labor Code, the first section of which lists the types of labor that count as "public works." Construction, alteration, demolition, installation, repair, irrigation, utility and reclamation work are among the types of labor that fit into the definition.

"Labor Code Section 1720 ... defines the term 'public works' much more broadly when the work is performed for irrigation districts, utility districts and others of a similar type than when it is performed for any other kind of public agency," Kruger wrote. "Why, precisely, did the Legislature choose to treat work for utility and other covered districts so differently from work for other public agencies? Whatever reasons the Legislature may once have had, they have been lost in the mists of time."

"Now, more than 80 years after the statute was first enacted, the Legislature may wish to revisit the issue," Kruger said. The Legislature could alter its definition of "public works" so that it "aligns with its current conception of the appropriate scope of the prevailing wage law," she wrote.

California's prevailing wage law was enacted in 1931 in response to the Great Depression. It only applied to workers engaged in construction work. The goal of the law, according to Corrigan's opinion, "was to give local contractors and labor a fair opportunity to work on public building projects that might otherwise be awarded to contractors who hired cheaper out-of-market labor."

When the Legislature enacted the Labor Code in 1937, it incorporated core provisions of the prevailing wage law. Section 1720 of the Labor Code slightly altered the definitions of "public works" that had been laid out in the prevailing wage law, by removing the word "construction" as a modifier of "work."

The plaintiffs in Monday's case -- a class of workers who had been hired by Barrett Business Services Inc. to sort waste for Los Angeles County -- argued the contractor failed to pay them minimum wage or prevailing wages; pay overtime at prevailing wage rates; and pay them the wages they were owed when they stopped working for the contractor in a timely manner. The plaintiffs said they were entitled to prevailing wages because their labor qualified as "public works."

Barrett argued that because some definitions of "public works" are limited to labor that involves construction, all definitions of the term should be interpreted in a similar manner.

"Lawmakers have used various formulations to describe what they intended to designate as 'public works' for purposes of these enactments," the opinion read. "When different formulations are used over the evolving history of a concept, often reflecting the prevailing forces of the times or the realities at play in different segments of the workplace, courts occasionally encounter the need for statutory interpretation. This is one such case."