Noting that “[t]he overarching purpose of the prevailing wage law is to ‘protect and benefit employees on public works projects,’ ” the Supreme Court today in Kaanaana v. Barrett Business Services Inc. broadly interprets one statutory definition of certain types of those projects for purposes of a requirement that minimum wages be paid to non-public employees working under contract on “public works.” The case concerns a company that contracted with a sanitation district to provide workers to sort recyclable — and remove non-recyclable — materials.
The court’s opinion by Justice Carol Corrigan is unanimous, but there is also a three-justice concurrence.
The court recognizes — and can’t explain why — the Legislature has provided a broader definition of “public works” for sanitation and other districts than for other public agencies, but says “[t]he Legislature is permitted to attack problems one step at a time.” The concurring opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger (joined by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Martin Jenkins) also can’t explain the difference — “[w]hatever reasons the Legislature may once have had, they have been lost in the mists of time” — but suggests that, “[n]ow, more than 80 years after the statute was first enacted, the Legislature may wish to revisit the issue.” Justice Kruger says that “any incongruity . . . may simply have flown under the radar until now.”
Today’s Kaanaana decision might have an impact on two other prevailing wage cases that are pending in the Supreme Court, both on reference from the Ninth Circuit: Busker v. Wabtec Corp. (see here and here) and Mendoza v. Fonseca McElroy Grinding Co. Inc. (see here and here).
The court affirms the Second District, Division Eight, Court of Appeal, which had issued a divided published opinion.