By MARISA KENDALL
PUBLISHED: February 6, 2018 at 6:00 am | UPDATED: February 6, 2018 at 6:07 am
SAN JOSE – As Silicon Valley’s housing market booms, benefiting homeowners, landlords and developers, some activists say one group isn’t reaping its fair share of the profits: the local construction workers building these expensive homes.
A new ballot measure for San Jose seeks to change that. If approved by voters in November, the “Build Better San Jose” initiative would require developers of large, private projects to hire more local workers, and pay them better.
“Workers are not paid enough to be able to afford to live in the area,” said Louise Auerhahn, director of economic and workforce policy for public policy group Working Partnerships USA, which helped draft the measure.
Responsible Development San Jose, a coalition that supports local construction workers, is set to send the initiative to city officials Tuesday, the first step to putting it before voters in November. Once it is approved by the city, it will need 21,200 signatures to make it to the ballot.
If passed by voters, the measure would require developers in San Jose to pay workers the “prevailing wage” – a payment standard set by the California Department of Industrial Relations that varies depending on a worker’s location and specific type of work.
As of last year, the prevailing wage for construction workers classified as “laborers” in Northern California ranged from about $20 to $33 per hour. Developers also would have to put forth a “best faith effort” to hire locally for at least 30 percent of a project’s hours, hiring workers who live in San Jose or within 50 miles of the city’s limits. And developers would be required to help train new local workers by using one hour of apprentice labor for every five hours worked by an experienced worker.