Golden Opportunity
In California, a groundbreaking law is linking climate action, labor standards and training imperatives to cultivate a more diverse workforce to build a new generation of transportation infrastructure.
By Senator Dave Cortese | California Senate District 15
California’s transportation network is the largest and most complex in the nation, delivering mobility solutions to nearly 40 million people across 163,000 square miles. Our state is a leader in transportation innovation, and now its pioneering work has entered an essential new area: reshaping how we engage, develop and compensate a more diverse generation of transportation professionals.
Last year, California successfully enacted Senate Bill 150 (SB 150). The legislation is providing greater access to training opportunities and good-paying jobs in the transportation industry through enhanced labor standards, initiatives and funding.
Here are the key provisions of the SB 150 infrastructure workforce development bill:
- Caltrans Support of High Road Construction Careers Program – The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) must reserve $50 million of federal funds from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), to be allocated over four years, in support of the state’s High Road Construction Careers program. High Road seeks to create opportunities for those who have been marginalized or disadvantaged, while helping to adapt to climate change and environmental sustainability challenges. The program creates partnerships with employers to help individuals acquire the skills necessary to secure good-paying jobs in the construction industry.
- Linkage of Contracts to Community Benefits – When the aggregate costs of a construction contract(s) exceed $35 million, the state agency must require the contractor to include community benefits as part of the agreement. Such benefits might involve partnerships with High Road, local hire goals, job fairs for construction apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship programs, or other focus areas that promote opportunities for veterans and those who live in economically disadvantaged areas. This aspect of the bill will help ensure that infrastructure dollars have clear impact on the workers and families who make their homes where major projects are being undertaken.
- Embedding Workforce Standards in Procurement and Contracting The state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, the Government Operations Agency, and the Transportation Agency must work with a wide range of stakeholders — local public agencies, labor groups, nonprofits and advocacy groups — to help establish terms to be included as a material part of a contract, including measurable results to ensure that investments maximize benefits to marginalized and disadvantaged communities.
The foundational concept of this legislation is to prepare California for a changing climate by equipping our workforce with the knowledge and skills to innovate in industries that are more sustainable and diverse than ever before. By drawing on state and federal investments, and surpassing federal job requirements, we are laying the groundwork for good-paying, eco-friendly jobs in the state.
Shaping a Workforce Development Bill
Legislative initiatives often can take a long time to develop. However, in the case of SB 150, we had to move very quickly to respond to the extraordinary infrastructure funding opportunities arising from a series of historic federal stimulus bills.
In the summer of 2021, the legislature was tasked with developing a package of bills that would streamline infrastructure development and speed up construction projects that could help the state meet its clean energy and climate goals. The legislative pace was so brisk that there was little time to integrate specific labor standards and community impact factors before the state’s budget vote. However, those advocating for these issues gained commitments from key administration and legislative leaders to address them in a bill that would complement the infrastructure streamlining package. Ultimately, the streamlining package and the SB 150 workforce development bill were signed into law together in July 2023.
The process of developing legislation and building political consensus will differ across the country, but I offer a few observations from our journey as SB 150 coauthors, who made labor standards and community benefits our north star.
1. Emphasize Transportation’s Enduring Value
Transportation competes for funding in the context of a myriad of other priorities. In our process, we highlighted the breadth of transportation’s value — extending beyond mobility to encompass its impact on climate, equity, community, innovation and economic growth. Additionally, and importantly, we earned support by emphasizing how transportation investments create hard assets that remain on the balance sheet for decades to come. One illustration of this is our high-speed rail project, which we intend to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, and many other cities. Such a transformative project requires long-term financial commitments to achieve its full potential.
2. Collaborate to Build Legislative Support
I was one of five legislators who authored and advocated for SB 150 over the course of more than two years. My coauthors were Senators Maria Elena Durazo and Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (Los Angeles), Senator Lena Gonzalez (Long Beach) and Assembly member Luz Rivas (San Fernando Valley). Our combined districts have more than 4 million constituents, and reflect diverse populations, geographies and key priorities. Accordingly, as we collaborated on SB 150 we took time to address a range of important goals relating to equitable hiring, minority community focus, clean energy, career pathways and more. Our ability to find common ground in authoring the bill helped us also win support of like-minded legislators, letting us secure commitments for SB 150 votes after budget passage.
3. Elicit broad stakeholder perspectives
During the late 2023 legislative recess a listening campaign with stakeholder groups was held to gain their perspectives on the proposed new law. We focused on how we could be more inclusive, speaking not only with builders and other private-sector participants, but also public-sector representatives. This approach paid off. The latter conversations, which included a range of union officials, yielded strong support for the labor and equity standards we were planning to attach to transportation investments. Officials urged us to expand such standards to large-scale public projects beyond transportation. We intend to advocate for such a broadening of scope in the future and we’ve started this next effort already in the State Senate.
4. Dispel misconceptions about labor standards
There is a narrative in the political realm that if you attach labor standards and equity provisions to funding that is intended to create infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities, that it will stunt progress. The thrust of this narrative is that private investments by builders, developers and entrepreneurs will shift elsewhere if such conditions exist. However, we have not seen this happen in Santa Clara County. Awhile back, we chose to attach labor standards to a seismic retrofit project for our county’s health and hospital system, one of the state’s largest. Today, our hospital is one of the only systems, public or private, that's successfully been seismically retrofitted. Many other retrofit projects in the state have not gotten traction, which suggests that labor standards may help, rather than hinder, complex construction projects.
Investing in workforce development, labor standards and community benefits help to advance our shared vision of a “California for All,” supporting greater opportunity, equity, sustainability and 21st century infrastructure. Our President Pro Tem, Mike McGuire has embodied this effort with his “California Made” legislative packaging. Hopefully leading to similar investments in our manufacturing workforce. Based on 30 years in various political and government roles, I am convinced that investments in people, good wages and family success are the keys to a thriving economy and great quality of life. In my view, there is no better economic stimulus than making sure that people are paid adequate wages and that investing in the community helps it prosper.
