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Welcoming in the New Year when you’re in California doesn’t only mean making a toast at midnight, it also means the addition of hundreds of new laws.
Of course SCCA monitors, engages and influences the most important legislation before they become laws. It does so from the union engineering contractor perspective specifically under the direction of SCCA members themselves.
The SCCA Government Affairs Team sent out a list of the top ten 2025 pieces of legislation that will become laws in 2025. That list was sent back in October and its focus is on the union engineering contractor community. You can review the list by clicking this link. Those bills are specific to union engineering contractors.
Additionally, the Contractors State License Board (CSLB), the California entity responsible for licensing and regulating contractors, also released a list of new laws for the industry. You can also review them by clicking this link.
It’s worth noting that some of the bills from CSLB didn’t make the SCCA list. The reason is simple. The Board’s primary focus is on consumer protection. It is, after all, under the California Department of Consumer Affairs. This results in a focus on home improvement contractors because the most at-risk consumers are homeowners. The legislative focus for union engineering contractors is quite different.
But there is some shared focus. The biggest exposure for union engineering contractors with the CSLB are typically unresolved union judgments for unpaid wages. Those judgments can cause the suspension of a license and possibly preclude any contractor personnel from qualifying future licenses. Of course any labor violations that SCCA members experience fall under the auspices of its Master Labor Agreements.
The CSLB list contains one bill that received significant interest from SCCA. AB 1002 (Gabriel) authorizes the Attorney General to bring an action against a contractor to suspend, revoke or deny a contractor’s license for labor violations such as failing to pay the appropriate wage. SCCA was originally opposed to the bill but it engaged the AG’s office with our fellow industry partners to adopt a favorable amendment. That amendment prevents the AG from using the new AB 1002 authority for situations arising from a “good faith mistake regarding which wage rate applies to a particular category of work…” SCCA’s concern was that two unions could claim the same work and the aggrieved union could leverage the AG to pursue actions against the contractor. The amendment prevents that situation from occurring.
We hope you have a pleasant New Year’s and a prosperous 2026!
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