For nearly a decade, lawmakers hoping to tackle the state’s housing crisis have faced a choice: win the support of the coalition that represents California’s construction unions — or watch those legislative aspirations sputter and die.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella group representing hundreds of thousands of bricklaying, pipefitting, bulldozing and foundation-laying union members across the state, has stood as a formidable political force that even governors have been forced to contend with.

That’s not just because the trades are reliable campaign contributors to California’s ruling Democrats — though they are. It’s also because they turn out motivated members, rarely shy away from a bare-knuckle political fight and reliably present a unified front against bills they aim to quash.

Last week, a few fissures appeared on that unified front.

Two affiliates of the trades council defected, throwing their weight behind a housing bill that the parent organization had been fighting for months. It’s a surprising and surprisingly public break that could help shift the political balance long defining California housing policy.

The bill in question would make permanent a 2017 state law that expedites affordable housing construction in many parts of the state. Under the reauthorization proposal, developers who make use of the law would be required to pay union-level wages — a standard that some in the building industry say still makes construction untenably expensive in many parts of the state. But it scraps a provision that mandates the hiring of union members for some projects.

“It’s an organizing opportunity and we’ll produce housing at all income levels. It’s what the state needs. Our own membership needs it. Desperately.”
— Jay Bradshaw, executive secretary of the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council

The breakaways — the California Council of Laborers and the state Conference of Operating Engineers — join California’s unionized carpenters, which have been battling with the larger trades council over mandatory labor standards for housing projects fast-tracked under state law. The carpenters argue that a union hiring rule isn’t workable, as there aren’t enough unionized construction workers to build all the new housing California requires.

“We say, represent and raise all workers up,” said Jay Bradshaw, executive secretary of the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council, in an interview last month. “It’s an organizing opportunity and we’ll produce housing at all income levels. It’s what the state needs. Our own membership needs it. Desperately.”

The executives of both unions refused to discuss the shift with CalMatters. But in separate letters of support for the bill, shared on Twitter by its author San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, they described the proposal “a step in the right direction” and one that will “ultimately lead to more affordable housing…(for) our membership and those in need.”

That has not been the line from the council, nor many of their union allies, who have decried Wiener’s bill as a reversal of hard-fought labor protections.

“We represent our affiliates and our affiliates as a whole still remain opposed to the bill,,” said Beverly Yu, a lobbyist for the building trades.

Democrats in the Legislature pride themselves on being on the side of unions. Hearings earlier this year, in which trades members rhetorically sparred with carpenters and other housing supporters, left many members of the Legislature feeling uneasy and frustrated. Supporters of Wiener’s bill hope the crack in the trades’ coalition could help allay some of those concerns.

Two new trade unions backing the bill “sends a strong, strong message,” Wiener said. “This is definitely a big move.”

Few housing projects use union-only labor

Wiener’s bill is a legislative repeat.

The goal of the 2017 state law, also written by Wiener, was to let developers in housing-strapped sections of the state side-step some of the early bureaucratic hurdles that often delay, curtail or stifle budding projects. In exchange, they must set aside at least 10% of the new units for low-income residents.

They also have to abide by higher labor standards. For anything over a certain size, developers have two options:

• Option 1: Build something that sets aside all new units for lower-income residents. Developers of those projects are then required to pay their construction crews “prevailing wages,” generally the equivalent of what a unionized construction worker earns on a public infrastructure project.

• Option 2: Build something with market-rate units. Those developers not only have to pay union-level wages, but are required to ensure that roughly half of their workforce has graduated from an apprenticeship program. Because the vast majority of these programs in California are run by unions, this “skilled and trained” requirement is effectively a hire-union rule. Back in 2017, the building trades made the inclusion of that provision the price of their support for the new law.

Half a decade later, the impact of that law has been lopsided. Roughly two-thirds of the proposed streamlined projects have been entirely affordable, meaning they are subject only to the higher wage rule, according to an analysis by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

Of the remaining third, it’s unclear whether any “skilled and trained” projects have actually broken ground.

Left untouched, the 2017 law will expire in 2026.

The market-rate side of the law “has not worked very well,” said Wiener, who argues that there are not enough apprenticeship graduates in the state to build the new housing the state requires. “The 100% affordable piece has worked like gangbusters.”

Citing that uneven experience, Wiener’s renewal bill this year scraps the “skilled and trained” standard entirely.

Under this version 2.0, the higher wage rule would apply to all projects — regardless of what is being built. But the bill does include a few other goodies for workers on large projects, including the provision that developers must request workers from an apprenticeship program first, effectively giving unionized workers a right of first refusal.

Even with these add-ons, the change in approach earned the bill the fierce opposition of the building trades and Wiener the ire of many in organized labor.

“Please tell me the last time a bill that red-lined labor standards out of existing law was passed in California?”
lorena gonzalez, executive secretary of the california labor federation

Yu accused Wiener of “rolling back the critical labor protections that we believe were negotiated with our leaders in good faith back in 2017.”

Joining the trades in their opprobrium has been the California Labor Federation, which claims more than 2 million union members.

“Please tell me the last time a bill that red-lined labor standards out of existing law was passed in California?” tweeted Lorena Gonzalez, the Labor Fed’s executive secretary and a former Assemblymember, a week after Wiener introduced his proposal in downtown San Francisco.

“More profits for developers, less benefits for workers,” she added. “That makes zero sense from folks who claim to be pro-labor.”

California Democrats seek truce on housing bills

Even if the terms, the players and the goal posts have shifted over the years, this is a familiar debate in California’s Capitol.

In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown pushed a streamlining plan for affordable housing projects. The bill died without a hearing. Among its long list of politically powerful antagonists were the building trades, who insisted that any housing developer using the law should have to pay their construction workers union-level wages. Back then, the prevailing wage standard was their demand.

The following year, Wiener, newly elected, took a lesson from that impasse and wrote the “prevailing wage” requirement into his streamlining bill. The building trades pushed further, securing the union-hiring requirement for mixed-income projects.

If getting the trades on board for a streamlining bill was seen as a major breakthrough, getting developers on board was arguably a bigger one, said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which advocates for affordable housing construction.

“We made a really big leap in 2017,” he said. Though developers were reluctant to agree to pay higher wages, it was deemed a worthwhile concession in exchange for the bill’s promise of letting projects dodge years of litigation and administrative review.

But that moment of coming together was short lived.

In 2020, a raft of pro-housing production bills went down in flames. One of the key reasons: The trades demanded across the board “skilled and trained” requirements and legislators were unwilling to go along.

Then, last year, an unlikely coalition emerged.

Oakland Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, then newly named as housing committee chair, teamed up with Bradshaw, the newly elected head of the Northern California carpenters’ union, and Pearl at the California Housing Consortium.

The goal: hammer out a counteroffer to the trades’ “skilled and trained” requirement that both the carpenters and the developers could live with.

The final deal, which Wicks happily included in her bill last year that fastracks the redevelopment of old stripmalls into apartment complexes, requires developers to pay their workers union-level wages. But for larger projects, per the terms of Bradshaw and Pearl’s negotiations, developers would also have to pay for their employees’ health insurance, make a first effort to hire union members, and open their payroll records for inspection to guard against wage theft.

These benefits would apply to union and non-union workers alike.The trades remained vociferously opposed until the last minute when legislators agreed to pass both Wicks’ legislation and another, similar bill that included the trades’ favored hiring requirement.

Neither bill will go into effect until later this summer. But Wicks’ approach has already become the go-to template for pro-housing legislators this year. That includes Wiener’s proposal to make the 2017 law permanent.

Wicks said she’s confident the approach will work again this year. With unions representing two trades now signing on, the odds of her prediction bearing out have likely ticked up.

“I think a lot of members feel like we litigated this,” Wicks told CalMatters before the two unions submitted their letters of support for Wiener’s bill. “We are ready to be, like, done with a ‘no to housing’ framework.”

“Like, done, done, done, done, done.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Press release from the Fortuna Police Department:

On April 23, 2023 at approximately 4:40 p.m. the Fortuna Police Department received a report of a suspected homicide at a residence in the 2300 block of Newburg Road in Fortuna. The adult male suspect was reportedly armed and barricaded inside the residence.

Fortuna Officers coordinated a response, residents in the immediate area were notified and evacuated for their safety. Over the course of several hours numerous attempts to establish contact with the suspect were made in order to negotiate with him. The suspect remained non-responsive throughout all attempts to communicate. While attempting to establish contact officers heard a single possible gunshot from inside the residence. A request for assistance was made and the multi-agency Crisis Negotiation Team and Humboldt County SWAT Team responded to assist.

Humboldt County SWAT assisted with tactical command including further attempts to establish negotiations to no avail. They eventually made entry into the residence where the suspect was located deceased from what preliminarily appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A second adult male was found inside also deceased from what preliminarily appeared to be an apparent gunshot wound. The Fortuna Police Department is currently investigating the matter as a suspected homicide-suicide.

The Fortuna Police Department would like to thank residents for their patience and express our gratitude to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Rio Dell Police Department, Ferndale Police Department, Fortuna Volunteer Fire Department and City Ambulance for their assistance during this operation/investigation.

There is no remaining active threat to the community related to this investigation. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending the Coroner’s investigation and notification of next of kin.

The Fortuna Police Department remains committed to public safety and transparency.

I’m as much of a fan of bosoms as anyone. Not the rock-my-soul Abrahamic kind, you understand, the other kind. But my titular fandom is tested by what seems to be daily Facebook “friend” invitations from amply-endowed young women (or bots) whose sole claim to my friendship appears to be the said endowments. Nothing else: no schools to show, no places, no jobs, no other information, just big tits. Here’s one that popped up a couple of days ago:

Which isn’t to say this ladybot doesn’t have anything else to offer, titillating or not. I’m reminded of an interview with the Bolivian-English actress Raquel Welch (née Tejada), she of One Million Years B.C. She said she was a skinny, scrawny kid who loved dancing and acting but couldn’t get any decent roles until her mid-teens when, as she put it, “the equipment arrived.” Everything changed, and next thing she was miniaturized, boobs and all, in Fantastic Voyage, leading to her three-spoken-lines-deerskin-bikini role in One Million Years. (I still have a crush on her, you understand, she was just a lovely, genuine person by all I’ve read and seen.) (For the record, I hate the word “boob.” Can’t understand how it got in here.)

Not to boast, but at 80, I think I’ve seen ‘em all: big, small, high, low, firm, soft, creamy white, copper brown, artificially added-to and subtracted-from, not forgetting none (post-mastectomy). And I can truly say, they’re all great in my memory. Breasts make me happy. I’ve never seen a pair that didn’t make my heart, among other organs, stir a little with pleasure.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to nipples, and specifically, Why do men have nipples? The obvious response is, “Why not?” They’re harmless, somewhat erogenous, interesting even. The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a long essay on this, in which he also discussed the anatomical equivalence of the penis and clitoris* under the title “Tits and Clits.” (Which his editor at Nature nixed.) As Gould explained, we men have nipples because they develop in the womb before embryos have identified as male or female, so by the time any anatomical differences kick in, nipples have already developed. Another way of looking at it is that we all started out female, so male nipples are left over from that time. (To be clear, sex is actually determined at fertilization by the 23rd pair of chromosomes, either XX = female or XY = male, but it takes about 16 weeks for any differences to be visible by ultrasound.)

* The difference between a clitoris and a golf ball, I’m told, is that most men will spend ten minutes looking for a golf ball.

Twenty years ago, before it became woke, Scientific American was a worthy and sensible magazine. In response to the “male nipples” question, the editors deferred to Gould’s “spandrel” theory, writing, “…we should not immediately assume that every trait has an adaptive explanation. Just as the spandrels of St. Mark’s domed cathedral in Venice are simply an architectural consequence of the meeting of a vaulted ceiling with its supporting pillars, the presence of nipples in male mammals is a genetic architectural by-product of nipples in females. So, why do men have nipples? Because females do.”

Glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Today we are overjoyed to welcome Carly Robbins to tea!

Carly is the development director with Food For People, and she’s here to tell us about how she got where she is — from Denver to Arizona to Eureka High to New York and back again, where after a few stops at local arts organizations she “found her place” at Food For People, the nonprofit that works itself to the bone to get essentials to Humboldt County residents in need.

More than that, though — we talk about what’s happening with Food For People these days and in the near future, including its brand-new facility on Fourteenth Street, which is scheduled to open within the next couple of months.

Food For People is great.

Today’s official tea time snacks, courtesy of our Argentinian friends, are alfajores! Go bake up a whole bunch, leech every iota of goodness out of your bags of PG Tips, then rush back here and press play!

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Self-taught documentarian Ray Olson is back with another edition of his inspirational travel series “Humboldt Outdoors.”

In today’s episode, Olson embarks on a journey through time to teach us about the history of Earth Day, which was celebrated for the first time on this day in 1970.

One year earlier, in January of 1969, the Santa Barbara oil spill ravaged the southern California coast, spewing an estimated three million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean. The massive oil spill killed thousands of sea birds and marine animals such as dolphins, elephant seals, and sea lions.

“It wreaked dreadful environmental havoc on the entire coast in that area, all the way down to Ventura,” Olson explains. “A U.S. senator named Gaylord Nelson decided to come out and see all the devastation for himself and it is said that while he was there on the coast checking out this oil spill, he was so impacted by the devastation that it had caused he came up with the idea of Earth Day.”

Watch the full video to learn more about the history of Earth Day and the birth of the modern environmental movement. And when you’re done, get outside and show Mama Nature some love by planting some of your favorite native plant species or by simply hugging a tree.

Happy Earth Day, Humboldt!

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PREVIOUSLY:

Local environmental groups have gotten very good at saying “no” to developments, whether it is a liquid natural gas export facility on Humboldt Bay or cutting and paving over redwood roots at Richardson Grove State Park.

But some development is socially necessary and desirable. On this week’s episodes, leaders from Humboldt Baykeeper, the Northcoast Environmental Center, Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, and EPIC talk about the recent lawsuit from “Citizens for a Better Eureka” that seeks to stop affordable housing development.

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Press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director Charlton H. Bonham has closed the recreational razor clam fishery in Humboldt County (PDF) following a recommendation from state health agencies (PDF) determining that consumption of razor clams in the area poses a significant threat for domoic acid exposure.

Pseudo-nitzschia, a naturally occurring, single-celled marine alga, produces the potent neurotoxin domoic acid under certain ocean conditions. Bivalve shellfish, like clams and mussels, accumulate the toxin without being harmed. In fact, razor clams are known to bioaccumulate domoic acid, meaning it may not clear their system until long after the ocean conditions that caused it have abated.

Sampling of razor clams from Clam Beach in Humboldt County in early April (PDF) found clams exceeding the current federal action level for domoic acid of greater than or equal to 20 parts per million.

Domoic acid poisoning in humans may occur within minutes to hours after consumption of affected seafood and can result in signs and symptoms ranging from vomiting and diarrhea to permanent loss of short-term memory (Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning), coma or death. There is no way to prepare clams for consumption that will remove the toxin – cooking and freezing have no effect.

The recreational clam fishery in Del Norte County is also closed at this time. CDFW will continue to work with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to collect, monitor and analyze razor clams to determine when the recreational razor clam fishery can be reopened safely in these areas.

For more information on any fishery closure or health advisories, visit wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Ocean/Health-Advisories.

To get the latest information on current fishing season closures related to domoic acid, call CDFW’s Domoic Acid Fishery Closure Information Line at (831) 649-2883.

For the latest consumption warnings, call CDPH’s Biotoxin information Line at (510) 412-4643 or toll-free at (800) 553-4133.