Henson v. C. Overaa & Co.
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs (pipefitter apprentices) claimed that the company violated the Prevailing Wage Law and Shelley-Maloney Apprentice Labor Standards Act of 1939 by hiring construction craft laborer apprentices instead of pipefitter apprentices to work on the construction of water treatment plants, seeking to represent a class of similarly situated individuals who lost wages and training as a result of the alleged violations. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the company on the ground the journeymen on the relevant projects were classified as laborers, and the Prevailing Wage Law merely required employers to hire apprentices who are in the same occupation as the journeymen on their projects. The court of appeal affirmed, rejecting an argument that the statutes require a contractor to select apprentices based not on their job title or union affiliation but the work processes on which they have been expressly approved to train. If, as they argued, a journeyman’s craft or trade is defined exclusively by the work processes that he is carrying out, that journeyman’s craft or trade could vary from moment to moment.
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