Seyfarth Synopsis: AB 1654 provides a PAGA exemption for certain employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement. While AB 1654 is limited to the construction industry, its underlying rationale applies much more broadly, and may augur further thoughtful restrictions on PAGA's broad scope.
California's Private Attorneys General Act, imposing draconian penalties for even relatively trivial Labor Code violations, remains the bane of California employers. Efforts to restrict PAGA's scope thus arise from time to time in the California Legislature, which occasionally enacts some reform. Lost in the attention received by recent high-profile employment legislation was a bill of enormous import for the construction industry specifically but also (potentially) for the future of PAGA enforcement more broadly.
AB 1654, effective on January 1, 2019, exempts "employees in the construction industry" from PAGA if employees' collective bargaining agreements meet certain requirements. To qualify for a PAGA exemption, a CBA must
- apply to working conditions, wages, and hours of work of employees in the construction industry,
- ensure employees receive a regular hourly wage not less than 30% more than the minimum wage,
- prohibit Labor Code violations redressable by PAGA,
- contain a grievance and binding arbitration procedure to redress Labor Code violations remedied by PAGA,
- expressly waive the requirements of PAGA in clear and unambiguous terms, and
- authorize an arbitrator to award all remedies available under PAGA, except for penalties payable to the LWDA.
While limited to the construction industry, AB 1654 suggests the question: why are not all industries afforded this exemption option? This thought was not lost on AB 1654's opponents, who wondered if the bill was a "camel's nose under the PAGA tent":
The immediate impact of this bill is limited to the construction industry. Its longer term policy implications may not be. The justification provided for the PAGA exemption proposed by this bill is that some construction industry employers have been recently targeted by frivolous PAGA lawsuits. It is not hard to imagine employers in many other sectors making the same argument.
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With that in mind, a key policy question presented by this bill is whether there is sound basis for distinguishing the construction industry from other sectors of the economy in relation to the application of PAGA. If not, it may be difficult, from a policy point of view, to rationalize denying future requests for PAGA exemptions under similar circumstances.
This is indeed the key policy question, and to which there is an easy answer: there is no sound basis to single out the construction industry for special protection from PAGA lawsuits. AB 1654 undermines the PAGA defenders' argument, adopted by the California Supreme Court in Iskanian, that a PAGA plaintiff stands in for the state and cannot waive the state's power by private arbitration agreement. In the bill, the Legislature says otherwise. PAGA claims can be waived—in this case through a valid CBA—provided employees have redress for Labor Code violations through a grievance and arbitration procedure in the CBA. While AB 1654 applies only to the construction industry, its reasoning supports an argument employers should use to argue against the logic of Iskanian in other contexts.
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