Labor Code 1777.5: apprentices on a tree and brush contract
Labor Code section 1777.5 makes a public works contractor working an apprenticeable craft send contract award information within ten days, request dispatch 72 hours ahead, and work one apprentice hour for every five journeyperson hours. California's apprenticeship database lists no tree or line clearance program, so the crew's actual craft decides everything.
A public agency that buys vegetation work buys it as a public work, and three statutes attach on the day of award. One sets the wage. One sets the registration. The third, Labor Code section 1777.5, obliges the contractor to put apprentices on the job, to tell an apprenticeship committee it has the job, and to pay into a training fund for every hour worked.
On a road job or a building job the mechanics are settled. On a vegetation contract the first question is harder than any of the mechanics, because it decides whether the mechanics apply at all: is the crew working in a craft California recognizes as apprenticeable. This page works that question first, then the forms, the clocks, the ratio and the penalty. The determination that sets the rate is covered on the prevailing wage page, and everything below assumes the work is a public work.
The ratio attaches to an apprenticeable craft
Section 1777.5(d) sets the trigger:
If the contractor to whom the contract is awarded by the state or any political subdivision, in performing any of the work under the contract, employs workers in any apprenticeable craft or trade, the contractor shall employ apprentices in at least the ratio set forth in this section
The duty follows the craft the crew is working in. The same subdivision then hands the definition of that craft to somebody else:
"Apprenticeable craft or trade," as used in this section, means a craft or trade determined as an apprenticeable occupation in accordance with rules and regulations prescribed by the California Apprenticeship Council.
The Council's rule is Title 8 section 205(c), and its second sentence is the operative one:
An "Apprenticeable Occupation" is one which requires independent judgment and the application of manual, mechanical, technical, or professional skills and is best learned through an organized system of on-the-job training together with related and supplemental instruction. Each "Apprenticeable Occupation" is defined by the work processes contained in the approved apprenticeship standards under which apprentices are training.
An occupation is apprenticeable because approved standards exist that describe its work processes. Skill is beside the point, and climbing a 70-foot eucalyptus with a saw is as skilled as anything on a public works site. The test is documentary, and a public database answers it.
What the state's own program search returns for tree work
The Division of Apprenticeship Standards runs two searches. The public works search is the one a contractor is told to use to find the committee its award notice goes to. It offers 30 occupation groups, running from Asbestos Workers through Laborers and Lineman to Tile Layer/Setter. The list holds no tree occupation.
The general program search covers apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship and on-the-job training programs across all 58 counties. On data the site states is current as of September 20, 2026, the keyword tree returns "No results found." So does clearance.
What does exist is a ring of adjacent occupations, all of them sitting under Laborer or forestry sponsors:
Trade or occupation | Committee or sponsor | Type |
Construction Craft Laborer | Laborers Southern California J.A.C., and three others | Apprentice |
Landscape Laborers | Northern California District Council of Laborers Landscape Laborer JATC | Apprentice |
Laborer Landscape and Irrigation Fitter | Southern California Laborers Landscape and Irrigation Fitter J.A.C. | Apprentice |
Gardener (Horticulture Worker) | City & County of San Francisco / Laborers Local 261 Gardener-Horticulture JAP | Apprentice |
Logging and Forestry Worker | Logging and Forestry Worker Apprenticeship Program | Apprentice |
Forest & Conservation Workers | Shasta College's Heavy Equipment Logging Operations | Pre-apprenticeship |
Forest and Conservation Technician | Columbia College Forest and Conservation Technician Training Program | OJT trainee |
The last two rows matter as much as the first five. A pre-apprenticeship and a section 3093 on-the-job training program sit outside the apprenticeship system. A person enrolled in either holds a different status, and only a registered apprentice agreement answers section 1777.5. Those hours belong to a different tally.
Search the Laborers group for Los Angeles County and the tool returns five sponsors, the first being the Laborers Southern California Joint Apprenticeship Committee at 1385 West Sierra Madre Ave, Azusa, CA 91702. Search Lineman in Los Angeles or Sacramento and it returns one, the Cal-Nev Power Lineman J.A.T.C. at 9846 Limonite Ave, Riverside. Those are real addresses a DAS 140 goes to. There is no equivalent address for a tree trimmer, because there is no program.
A trimmer trainee is not a registered apprentice
Determination C-TT-2026-1, the statewide craft determination for Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance), lists six classifications, three of them Trimmer Trainee steps:
Classification | Basic hourly rate | Total hourly rate |
Tree Trimmer | $45.37 | $67.13 |
Trimmer Trainee: Start (0-6 Months) | $31.76 | $49.18 |
Trimmer Trainee: 6-12 Months | $36.30 | $55.17 |
Trimmer Trainee: After 12 Months | $40.84 | $61.16 |
Ground person First 6 Months | $27.22 | $38.59 |
Ground person After 6 Months | $29.49 | $41.67 |
Those trainee steps read like an apprentice wage progression. The determination carries no apprentice classification at all. A registered apprentice is a person who has signed an apprentice agreement registered with DAS under an approved program, and who is paid the apprentice prevailing rate DIR publishes separately. The trainee on C-TT-2026-1 is a different animal entirely: an 18-month safety qualification under section 2951, held under the direct supervision of a qualified line clearance tree trimmer, set by Cal/OSHA for reasons of its own.
Three trainees on a crew leave the section 1777.5 ratio exactly where it was.
Two determinations, and two training figures
Section 1777.5(m)(1) sets the money side:
A contractor to whom a contract is awarded, who, in performing any of the work under the contract, employs journeymen or apprentices in any apprenticeable craft or trade shall contribute to the California Apprenticeship Council the same amount that the director determines is the prevailing amount of apprenticeship training contributions in the area of the public works site.
The amount the director determined is the Training column on the determination. Read that column across the tree determinations and it disagrees with itself:
Determination | Craft | Training per hour |
C-TT-2026-1 | Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance) | $0.68 |
Tree Maintenance (Laborer), twelve southern counties | $0.00 | |
Tree Maintenance (Laborer), northern counties | $0.00 |
One trimmer working a 40-hour week under C-TT-2026-1 accrues $27.20 in training at $0.68 an hour. The same week of routine tree maintenance under either Tree Maintenance determination accrues zero, because zero is the figure the director published.
Where an amount is owed, Title 8 section 230.2(b) sets the clock:
Training contributions to the Council are due and payable on the 15th day of each month for work performed during the preceding month.
The contribution goes to the Council on a CAC-2 form generated from DIR's online tool, which stamps each one with a transaction ID. A contractor already paying a program's trust fund takes the full amount as a credit under 1777.5(m)(1), which covers the whole obligation.
The $0.68 is where the code stops being clear. It is a figure derived from a collective bargaining agreement, and a signatory contractor pays it into that agreement's training trust. A non-signatory has no trust to pay and no tree program to fund. DAS's own public works FAQ points both ways at once. It lists "When the craft or trade is not apprenticeable" as one of four exemptions from section 1777.5, and it says:
Training Contributions must be paid for every hour worked by every journeyman and apprentice working in an apprenticeable craft (including overtime). Training Funds cannot be paid to the workers unless it is a non-apprenticeable craft.
Read together, a non-apprenticeable craft means the $0.68 is paid to the worker as part of the total hourly rate rather than to the Council. The determination itself stays silent on which way line clearance falls. Section 1777.7(g) gives the interpretation of section 1777.5 to the regulations of the California Apprenticeship Council, and the person who applies them to a specific job is the DAS district office covering the project's county. Ask before bid, in writing, and keep the answer with the bid file.
Ten days to send the award notice, and three boxes on it
Title 8 section 230 sets the first deadline, and it runs from execution rather than from mobilization:
The information shall be provided to the applicable apprenticeship committee within ten (10) days of the date of the execution of the prime contract or subcontract, but in no event later than the first day in which the contractor has workers employed upon the public work.
The vehicle is form DAS 140, and the regulation lists eight items it has to carry, including estimated journeyman hours, the number of apprentices to be employed, and the approximate dates they would be employed. A contractor already approved to train sends it to its own committee. A contractor without an approval sends it to every applicable committee in the project's geographic area, for every craft it intends to employ.
The bottom of the form asks for one of three boxes:
Box | What it says | What it means |
1 | Already approved to train by a named committee | Employ and train under that committee's standards |
2 | Will comply with a named committee's standards for this job only | Fringes and training funds go to that committee's trust; the committee's maximum ratio applies |
3 | Will employ and train under California Apprenticeship Council regulations | Minimum and maximum ratio are both 1:5 per craft; training contribution usually goes to the Council |
A non-signatory vegetation contractor checks box 3. That single checkbox is what routes the training contribution to Sacramento rather than to a trust fund, and it is what locks the maximum apprentice ratio at the same 1:5 as the minimum.
The form is a notice of award, and it prints the limit of that on its face: a separate request is required for actual dispatch.
Seventy-two hours to ask, and what happens when nobody answers
Title 8 section 230.1(a) sets the second clock:
Contractors who are not already employing sufficient registered apprentices (as defined by Labor Code Section 3077) to comply with the one-to-five ratio must request the dispatch of required apprentices from the apprenticeship committees providing training in the applicable craft or trade and whose geographic area of operation includes the site of the public work by giving the committee written notice of at least 72 hours (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays) before the date on which one or more apprentices are required.
A request emailed at 9:40 on a Friday for a Monday start gives the committee one business day. The regulation asks for three. The same subdivision sets a floor on the size of the ask:
Except for projects with less than 40 hours of journeyman work, each request for apprentice dispatch shall be for not less than an 8 hour day per each apprentice, or 20% of the estimated apprentice hours to be worked for an employer in a particular craft or trade on a project, whichever is greater
Form DAS 142, revision 6/24, is incorporated by reference in the regulation as the optional vehicle. One occupation per form. If a committee dispatches nobody, the contractor requests from the next committee in the area, and keeps going until every committee in that craft has been asked. Then the safe harbor opens:
if in response to a written request no apprenticeship committee dispatches, or agrees to dispatch during the period of the public works project any apprentice to a contractor who has agreed to employ and train apprentices in accordance with either the apprenticeship committee's standards or these regulations within 72 hours of such request (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays) the contractor shall not be considered in violation of this section as a result of failure to employ apprentices for the remainder of the project, provided that the contractor made the request in enough time to meet the above-stated ratio.
The proviso at the end is the whole clause. A request sent in week eleven of a twelve-week contract asks for hours the schedule has already spent, and the harbor stays shut. DAS states the same thing about timing in plainer words, that forms sent after the project is finished leave the contractor out of compliance and exposed to penalties.
The ratio is per craft, straight time, totaled at the end
Section 1777.5(g) fixes the floor:
However, except as otherwise provided in this section, in no case shall the ratio be less than one hour of apprentice work for every five hours of journeyman work.
Three rules govern the arithmetic. Subdivision (h) disposes of the first one:
Any work performed by a journeyman in excess of eight hours per day or 40 hours per week shall not be used to calculate the ratio.
Premium hours stay out of the denominator. DAS supplies the second, that the ratio is per individual craft and that crafts may not be mixed to reach it. The third is timing: the total is struck at the end of the project rather than day by day, though subdivision (h) also asks the contractor to employ apprentices during the same period the journeymen are working.
Four laborers on a county fuel break who book 640 straight-time hours in the Construction Craft Laborer classification owe 128 apprentice hours in that same classification, which is 640 divided by five. Saturday overtime leaves the number where it is. Hours the same crew booked under a different craft determination belong to that craft's own tally.
An apprentice gets only the work in their own standards
This is the subsection that decides whether a Laborer apprentice can be handed a chainsaw. Section 230.1(c):
Apprentices employed pursuant to Labor Code section 1777.5 shall be registered apprentices who are training under apprenticeship standards that include the work processes that the contractor will perform on the project. Contractors must assign apprentices work that is included in the apprenticeship standards under which the apprentices are training. Apprentices on public works cannot be assigned work other than that which is stated in the work processes of the apprenticeship standards under which the apprentices are training.
The standards are the sponsor's document, and the sponsor will supply them or the ratio article from them on request. Where felling, limbing, chipping and brush disposal appear in the work processes, an apprentice dispatched under those standards can do that work and the hours count. Where the standards stop short of that work, the apprentice spends the day on something else while the contractor still owes the hours.
That subsection reached its current wording slowly, and a scope of work written mid-dispute may still quote the older one:
Date | What happened to section 230.1 |
August 6, 2021 | Amendment of subsection (c) filed, operative October 1, 2021 |
September 20, 2021 | Order stayed by the Sacramento County Superior Court, Case No. 34-2021-80003714 |
February 23, 2023 | Stay vacated |
March 2, 2023 | Order stayed by the Third District Court of Appeal, Case No. C098009 |
March 27, 2023 | Stay vacated |
July 3, 2024 | Amendment of subsection (a) filed, operative October 1, 2024 |
Both stays are gone. The text quoted above is the text in force.
Thirty thousand dollars, and the sub who never reaches it
Section 1777.5(o) is one sentence and it carries two different answers:
This section does not apply to contracts of general contractors or to contracts of specialty contractors not bidding for work through a general or prime contractor when the contracts of general contractors or those specialty contractors involve less than thirty thousand dollars ($30,000).
A city that awards a $22,000 street tree contract directly to a tree contractor has awarded a contract the section does not reach. The same $22,000 of tree work, taken as a subcontract under a $2 million road prime, is reached in full, because the exemption is withheld from a specialty contractor bidding through a prime. Contract size is half the test. Who the contract is with decides whether size gets asked at all.
Two other numbers sit nearby and do different jobs. Public works contractor registration turns on $15,000 for maintenance work under section 1771.1(n), a lower line on a different statute. And DAS's position is that training fund contributions are part of the prevailing wage package even below the section 1777.5 threshold, paid to the employee where the project is exempt.
What the awarding body writes, and how it checks
Section 1777.5(n) gives the agency exactly one drafting duty, in two sentences:
The body awarding the contract shall cause to be inserted in the contract stipulations to effectuate this section. The stipulations shall fix the responsibility of compliance with this section for all apprenticeable occupations with the prime contractor.
The second sentence is the one to read twice. Responsibility for every apprenticeable occupation on the project sits with the prime, including occupations worked by subcontractors the agency never contracted with. An agency that wants the tier below covered already has that allocation, made for it by the Legislature.
Three things give the agency something to check against:
The closeout statement. Section 1777.5(e) obliges each contractor and subcontractor, within 60 days after concluding work, to submit a verified statement of journeyman and apprentice hours to the apprenticeship program, and to the awarding body if the awarding body asks. Ask in the contract, so the request is already on the record when the 60 days start.
The training fund history. The CAC Training Fund Search returns a named contractor's contributions to the Council for the previous 48 months, searched by contractor license number, and it is open to awarding agencies by design. A contractor that paid a trust fund instead is absent from that history, and produces the trust's own proof of payment.
The payroll record. Apprentice hours and classifications arrive on the certified payroll every filing period, which is where a ratio going wrong becomes visible in month two rather than at closeout.
What a missed notice costs per day
Penalties under section 1777.7 run on calendar days, not on workdays:
Provision | What it authorizes |
1777.7(a)(1) | Not more than $100 for each full calendar day of noncompliance, on a knowing violation |
1777.7(a)(1) | Not more than $300 for each full calendar day of a second or subsequent knowing violation within three years, where training was not provided |
1777.7(a)(2) | In lieu of a first-time penalty, an order to provide apprentice employment equal to the hours that would have been worked |
Debarment up to one year for a first serious violation, up to three years for a second or subsequent |
Section 230 turns an unsent DAS 140 into a running meter:
Failure to provide contract award information, which is known by the awarded contractor, shall be deemed to be a continuing violation for the duration of the contract, ending when a Notice of Completion is filed by the awarding body, for the purpose of determining the accrual of penalties under Labor Code Section 1777.7.
Work that started March 2, 2026 on a contract whose Notice of Completion was filed September 14, 2026 spans 196 days. At the statutory maximum of $100 a day, that is $19,600 for a form that takes fifteen minutes. The Labor Commissioner may reduce a penalty that would be disproportionate to the severity of the violation, and the five circumstances in 1777.7(b) are what the reduction is argued on, starting with whether the party took steps to remedy the violation once it had notice.
A prime carries its own exposure for a subcontractor's failure under 1777.7(e), and escapes it by doing four things:
1. Including sections 1771, 1775, 1776, 1777.5, 1813 and 1815 in the subcontract. 2. Continually monitoring the sub's use of apprentices, including periodic review of its certified payroll. 3. Acting to correct the failure once it learns of one, up to retaining funds due the sub. 4. Obtaining a declaration signed under penalty of perjury, before final payment, that the sub employed the required number of apprentices.
The prevailing wage page covers the near-identical list section 1775(b) sets for underpayment. The declaration in item 4 is a separate document from that one. It names apprentices rather than wages, and it has to exist before the last check goes out.
Further reading
DIR prevailing wage on public works vegetation contracts: The two tree determinations, and the training column this page spends most of its time on.
Public works contractor registration with the DIR: The $15,000 maintenance line, and the debarment order that revokes a registration without an appeal.
Certified payroll in XML: what a contractor files and when: Where apprentice hours and apprentice classifications end up once the ratio has been worked.
Frequently asked questions
There is no tree trimmer apprenticeship program in California. Does that end the obligation?
It ends the ratio and the dispatch request, and it does not end the analysis. Labor Code section 1777.5(d) attaches the ratio to work in an apprenticeable craft or trade, and DAS lists the absence of an apprenticeable craft as one of four exemptions from section 1777.5. What survives is the crew composition question. A fuel reduction contract worked by laborers and equipment operators is worked in crafts that are apprenticeable in every California county, whatever the contract calls the work, and the ratio follows the craft rather than the contract title. Get the craft determination settled before bid, and get the DAS district office's view in writing if the crew mixes tree work with grading, hauling or traffic control.
Can a Laborer apprentice be put on a chainsaw on a fuel break?
Only if felling and limbing appear in the work processes of the standards that apprentice is training under. Title 8 section 230.1(c) states that apprentices on public works cannot be assigned work other than that which is stated in the work processes of the apprenticeship standards under which the apprentices are training. The sponsor holds those standards and will supply them on request. An apprentice dispatched under Construction Craft Laborer standards that do not reach tree felling can be on the project, and the hours will not answer for the hours the contractor needed in that craft.
The tree subcontract is $18,000. Is it exempt from section 1777.5?
Not if it was bid through a prime. Section 1777.5(o) exempts general contractors and specialty contractors not bidding for work through a general or prime contractor when the contract involves less than $30,000. A tree contractor awarded $18,000 directly by a city falls inside that exemption. The same $18,000 of work taken as a subcontract under a road prime falls outside it, because the subdivision withholds the exemption from specialty contractors bidding through a prime. The threshold for public works contractor registration is a different number on a different statute, and $15,000 of maintenance work reaches it.
Does a Cal/OSHA qualified line clearance tree trimmer trainee count toward the apprentice ratio?
No. The trainee in section 2951(b) is a safety classification defined in Title 8 section 2700, and it describes a person working under the direct supervision and instruction of a qualified line clearance tree trimmer. A registered apprentice is a person who has signed an apprentice agreement registered with the Division of Apprenticeship Standards under an approved program. The two categories are set by different agencies for different purposes, and a person can hold one without holding the other. Only the registered apprentice's hours count against the one-to-five ratio.
