DCB attorneys this month won two decisions from California courts of appeal: in Plumbers Local 290 v. Rea, the court agreed with the union’s interpretation of state prevailing wage laws as covering construction on common areas of a privately-owned office building where a public agency was leasing most of the building’s office space. The court rejected the contrary view of the State Department of Industrial Relations. The court also awarded the union its attorneys’ fees under the private attorney general doctrine.
In Rubalcava v. City of Los Angeles and UNITE HERE Local 11, the appellate court reversed a trial court’s invalidation of a new ordinance setting a living wage requirement for hotels near LAX airport. The trial court had relied on the fact that an earlier ordinance also setting such a requirement had been rescinded in response to a referendum petition containing the necessary number of signatures to put the issue on the ballot. The appellate court held the differences between the new and old ordinances were significant enough that the constitutional right to referendum had not been violated by the City. (The City added assistance to the airport zone and promised not to regulate wages in other zones without first finding those zones met certain criteria).
