Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011: prevailing wage.

Existing law establishes the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement in the Department of Industrial Relations for the enforcement of labor laws, including wage claims. Existing law generally requires that not less than the general prevailing rate of per diem wages, as specified, be paid to workers employed on a public work, as defined. Existing law requires a contractor or subcontractor to forfeit to the state or political subdivision on whose behalf a public work is being performed a penalty, as provided and determined by the Labor Commissioner, for violations of these prevailing wage provisions. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of, an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment. The Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011 authorizes the Governor, until January 1, 2016, to certify projects for certain CEQA streamlining benefits if the project meets certain conditions, including a condition that the project creates high-wage, highly skilled jobs that pay prevailing wages. Existing law requires the applicant of a project that is so certified to include this wage condition in all contracts for the performance of work for the project. This bill would specify that the above wage condition is subject to enforcement by the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. The bill would make a project applicant who fails to pay, or fails to ensure the payment of, prevailing wages subject to the penalties for failure to pay prevailing wages on a public work. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.