Catherwood LibraryILR School

Carpentry workers in California have protested at the state capitol building every couple of months for the past two years. The protests have resulted in new housing construction bills being signed into law by the California governor. The bills that were signed were SB4 and SB423, which make it more accessible for affordable housing to be built in order to meet the high demands for housing around the state. California has faced a widespread housing crisis, with over a two million unit housing shortage in the state. The State Building and Construction Trades Council and the California Conference of Carpenters have been major groups that represent carpenters and have been lobbying for new construction bills. Tension has grown between these two groups as the California Conference of Carpenters supported bill AB 2011, which provides all workers with union-approved wages and set healthcare benefits, but doesn’t require a work standard, a measure that the State Building and Construction Trades Council strongly supports. The work standard requires all workers on a building or construction site to be unionized, but opponents of the measure state that there are not enough union workers in the industry to meet the proposed threshold.