DIR prevailing wage on public works vegetation contracts
California publishes two craft determinations for tree work. Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance) covers high voltage distribution and transmission lines only, and pays a journey-level trimmer $67.13 an hour under C-TT-2026-1. Tree Maintenance (Laborer) excludes line clearance, and pays $36.37 in the twelve southern counties under SC-102-X-20-2026-1. Both took effect September 1, 2026.
In September 2026, on a California public works contract, a journey-level tree trimmer is owed either $67.13 an hour or $36.37. Same saw, same species, same county. What separates the two numbers is whether the tree is being cut to clear a high voltage conductor.
Both figures come from the same office on the same day. The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) publishes two craft determinations that reach tree work, and a bid priced against the wrong one misses by roughly the cost of a second crew. This page is about which determination applies and what it obliges.
Whether a particular vegetation contract is public works at all is a separate question, decided under Labor Code section 1720 and, where it is arguable, by a coverage determination from the Director. That question is worked through here.
Two determinations, and the conductor decides which
One office sets the rate for a craft. Labor Code section 1770 names it:
The Director of the Department of Industrial Relations shall determine the general prevailing rate of per diem wages in accordance with the standards set forth in Section 1773, and the director's determination in the matter shall be final except as provided in Section 1773.4.
An awarding body copies that determination into its bid documents. Writing its own number for a craft is outside its power.
The first craft is Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance). Its scope of work provisions draw the boundary in a single line, printed in capitals:
COVERS WORK FOR MAINTENANCE OF HIGH VOLTAGE DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSMISSION ELECTRICAL LINES ONLY.
The second craft is Tree Maintenance (Laborer). Its determinations carry a caption under the craft name, "Applies Only to Routine Tree Maintenance Work, Not Construction and/or Landscape Construction," and a footnote that closes the other door:
This determination does not apply to the work of a landscape laborer employed on landscape construction (work incidental to construction or post-construction maintenance during the plant installation and establishment period) or to tree trimming work involving line clearance.
The scope of work for Tree Maintenance says the same thing from the other side, excluding "tree trimmer utility line clearance work within the scope of work in any pre-existing prevailing wage determinations for Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance) and Tree Trimmer (Line Clearance)." What it does cover is broad: "trimming, pruning, topping, tree/stump removal, grinding of stumps, roof pruning and root barrier installation; handling, piling, hauling and chipping of brush and limbs."
Four determinations divide the state between them. All four were current on September 20, 2026.
Classification | Determination | Basic hourly rate | Total hourly rate |
Tree Trimmer | $45.37 | $67.13 | |
Ground person, after 6 months | C-TT-2026-1 | $29.49 | $41.67 |
Tree Trimmer | $42.30 | $59.09 | |
Senior Tree Trimmer | $28.79 | $38.57 | |
Tree Trimmer | SC-102-X-20-2026-1 | $26.79 | $36.37 |
Groundperson | SC-102-X-20-2026-1 | $25.15 | $34.58 |
Tree Trimmer, Area 1 | $29.20 | $41.37 | |
Tree Trimmer, Area 2 | NC-102-X-21-2026-1 | $26.20 | $38.37 |
Los Angeles County sits inside C-TT-2026-1 and inside SC-102-X-20-2026-1 at once. A crew working a city park there is on $36.37. The same crew, the same week, clearing the municipal utility's distribution line is on $67.13.
The total hourly rate is the floor, and benefits count toward it
The column that binds is the total hourly rate, not the basic hourly rate. Section 1773.1 lists what may be counted toward it, including health and welfare, pension, vacation, travel, subsistence and approved training. Subdivision (c) sets the arithmetic:
Employer payments are a credit against the obligation to pay the general prevailing rate of per diem wages.
Read that against C-TT-2026-1. The Tree Trimmer line reads $45.37 basic, then $8.90 health and welfare, $11.22 pension, $0.91 vacation, $0.68 training and $0.05 other. Those add to $67.13. A contractor that funds all of it through plans pays $45.37 in the paycheck. A contractor paying cash instead puts the whole $67.13 there. The two bids reach the same total for the worker and read completely differently on the payroll register, which is where certified payroll starts to matter.
Two limits sit on the credit. Benefits already required by other state or federal law fall outside it. The straight time and overtime wages found to be prevailing stay owed in full.
An asterisk decides whether the rate moves mid-contract
Every determination carries an expiration date, and after that date either one asterisk or two. The Department states the difference on the predetermined increase notice itself:
When referencing our prevailing wage determinations, please note that if the prevailing wage rate determination which was in effect on the bid advertisement date of a project has a single asterisk () after the expiration date, the rate will be good for the life of the project. However, if a prevailing wage rate determination has double asterisks () after the expiration date, the rate must be updated on the following date to reflect the predetermined rate change(s)
Two asterisks mean the increase is already determined and already owed on the date it lands. It arrives on its own, and the contractor is expected to have the date.
The two Tree Maintenance determinations, issued on the same day by the same office, answer this differently. NC-102-X-21-2026-1 expires June 30, 2027 with one asterisk, so a northern California contract advertised this fall holds its rate. SC-102-X-20-2026-1 expires June 30, 2027 with two, and its increase notice publishes four years of steps.
Effective | Increase, to be allocated to wages and/or fringes |
July 1, 2027 | $1.85 |
July 1, 2028 | $1.90 |
July 1, 2029 | $1.95 |
July 1, 2030 | $2.00 |
A five-year street tree contract in San Diego advertised in October 2026 starts at a $36.37 total hourly rate for a Tree Trimmer and ends owing $7.70 an hour more. That is 21 percent, owed whatever the contract says. On a fixed unit price it comes out of margin, which is the reason unit price mechanics on a multi-year vegetation contract usually carry an escalator clause keyed to the determination rather than to an index.
The line clearance craft moves on a shorter fuse. C-TT-2026-1 expires December 31, 2026 with two asterisks, and the notice is specific about what happens the next morning:
Effective January 1, 2027, there is a $0.12 increase allocated as follows: $0.25 increase to Health & Welfare and $0.13 decrease to Pension.
Twelve cents is a rounding error on a budget. A payroll record that still shows the December allocation on a January 4 shift is a compliance problem, because the allocation changed even though the total barely did.
The determination also sets who is on the crew
A prevailing wage determination is usually read as a price list. The Tree Maintenance determinations carry two rules that reach further than price, both printed as footnotes and repeated in the scope of work.
The first fixes crew composition:
There shall be at least one Senior Tree Trimmer on crews of three or more.
A three-person crew bid as one Tree Trimmer and two Groundpersons fails that rule, whatever the work takes. In the twelve southern counties, moving one of them from $36.37 to $38.57 costs $2.20 an hour and $17.60 across an eight-hour day, and the determination settles it.
The second fixes how a mixed day is paid:
Employees shall be paid for all hours worked in a work day at the highest paid classification worked during the day.
The whole day pays at the top classification touched. A Groundperson who takes the saw up the tree for forty minutes is paid as a Tree Trimmer for all eight hours, which is $36.37 rather than $34.58 for the whole shift.
The scope of work draws the classification lines that decide this: Senior Tree Trimmer "directs and performs the trimming and pruning of trees," Tree Trimmer "performs all trimming and pruning of trees," and Groundsperson performs the maintenance work outside both. A rope tender who stays on the ground all day is a Groundsperson. A rope tender who climbs once is a Tree Trimmer for that day.
Overtime is printed on the determination, above the statutory floor
Section 1815 sets the statutory minimum for overtime on public works:
work performed by employees of contractors in excess of 8 hours per day, and 40 hours during any one week, shall be permitted upon public work upon compensation for all hours worked in excess of 8 hours per day at not less than 1 1/2 times the basic rate of pay.
The words "not less than" are doing the work. C-TT-2026-1 prints one overtime column and it is headed Daily/Saturday/Sunday Overtime Hourly Rate (2X). For a Tree Trimmer that column reads $113.86. The line clearance determination prints that column and stops, so a storm response bid that prices hours nine through twelve at time and a half falls short on every one of them.
Tree Maintenance splits the day. SC-102-X-20-2026-1 prints $49.765 as the daily overtime rate for a Tree Trimmer and $63.160 for Sunday and holiday work, and a footnote says which is which:
Monday thru Saturday shall constitute a workweek. Rate applies to first 4 overtime hours Monday thru Saturday, and all time worked in excess of forty (40) hours per workweek. All other time is paid at the Sunday and Holiday double-time rate.
Hour thirteen on a Tuesday is double time. So is the first hour on a Sunday. Section 1813 adds a separate $25 forfeiture for each worker for each calendar day worked over eight hours and forty hours in violation of the article, and directs the awarding body to report violations to the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
Three counties fall outside the main line clearance determination
C-TT-2026-1 names its localities county by county, and the list stops at 55. Del Norte, Modoc and Siskiyou are missing from it. Those three are covered by a separate determination, C-TT-061-659-12-2026-1, issued February 22, 2026.
A Tree Trimmer clearing a line in Siskiyou County is owed a $59.09 total hourly rate. Cross into Shasta County and the same worker on the same conductor is owed $67.13. The far northern determination also carries a single asterisk, so a project advertised there in the fall of 2026 keeps its rate for the life of the job while a project one county south watches its rate move.
Tree Maintenance divides the state on different lines again. SC-102-X-20-2026-1 covers twelve southern counties. NC-102-X-21-2026-1 covers the other forty-six and then splits them into two areas, with Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma in Area 1 and everything else in Area 2. A Tree Trimmer is $41.37 in Sonoma and $38.37 in Sacramento. Reading the county off the wrong craft's locality list is an easy way for a correct rate to land on the wrong job.
What the awarding body has to publish, and by when
The duty to put the rate in front of bidders is the agency's. Section 1773.2 says where:
The body awarding any contract for public work, or otherwise undertaking any public work, shall specify in the call for bids for the contract, and in the bid specifications and in the contract itself, what the general rate of per diem wages is for each craft, classification, or type of worker needed to execute the contract.
An agency may instead state in all three documents that copies are on file at its principal office. The section then adds a flat requirement: "The awarding body shall also cause a copy of the determination of the director of the prevailing rate of per diem wages to be posted at each job site."
That sentence was written for a building site. A vegetation contract has a route instead. The crew works forty miles of roadside over six weeks and sleeps in three different towns. Section 1773.2 is silent on where the determination goes on a linear project, and the Department has left it there.
In practice the posting travels with the crew, in the truck or on the tailboard with the other required postings, and the awarding body decides whether that satisfies the section. Settle it in the contract rather than in the first compliance review.
The award itself has a clock. Section 1773.3(a)(1) requires notice to the Department:
An awarding body shall provide notice to the Department of Industrial Relations of any public works contract subject to the requirements of this chapter, within 30 days of the award, but in no event later than the first day in which a contractor has workers employed upon the public work.
Whichever comes first governs. An emergency fuel reduction award on a Monday with crews cutting Tuesday gets one day. The notice is transmitted electronically and has to carry the section 1725.5 registration numbers of the contractor and of every subcontractor listed on the successful bid, which means an unregistered sub on the day of award stops the filing. An awarding body that misses it faces $100 for each day in violation, capped at $10,000 for each project.
When no classification fits, someone has to ask early
Some vegetation scopes sit between the two crafts. Mastication by a track machine, chipping crews working only on felled material, and herbicide application on a right of way all land near the edge of the Tree Maintenance scope. That scope covers "the operation of all vehicles, tools and equipment" used in tree maintenance, and stops short of saying where tree maintenance ends and grading or pest control begins. Saying so in the bid documents beats guessing at it.
The Department publishes the route. Its determinations index gives the deadline in one sentence:
Because it may necessitate a wage survey, you should allow 45 days prior to the bid advertisement date for such request. Include in your request the project name or bid number, the classifications needed, job description if available, the bid advertisement date, and location of the project(s).
Forty-five days before advertising is a planning date. It has to be set when the scope of work is drafted.
After advertising begins, the route narrows and belongs to the bidder. Section 1773.4 gives any prospective bidder, any craft representative and the awarding body itself 20 days after commencement of advertising to file a verified petition to review the rate. The consequences are immediate:
Upon receipt by it of the notice of the filing of such petition the body awarding the contract or authorizing the public work shall extend the closing date for the submission of bids or the starting of work until five days after the determination of the general prevailing rates of per diem wages pursuant to this section.
The Director's answer is final, becomes the determination of the awarding body, and is included in the contract. A bidder that believes the agency named Tree Maintenance for work that is line clearance has twenty days to say so, and the whole schedule moves while the question is answered.
What the wrong classification costs per worker per day
Section 1774 is one sentence and it reaches down the tiers: "The contractor to whom the contract is awarded, and any subcontractor under him, shall pay not less than the specified prevailing rates of wages to all workmen employed in the execution of the contract." Section 1775 prices the failure:
The contractor and any subcontractor under the contractor shall, as a penalty to the state or political subdivision on whose behalf the contract is made or awarded, forfeit not more than two hundred dollars ($200) for each calendar day, or portion thereof, for each worker paid less than the prevailing wage rates as determined by the director for the work or craft in which the worker is employed.
The Labor Commissioner sets the amount inside a floor and a ceiling, on two considerations: whether the error was a good faith mistake promptly corrected, and whether there is a prior record.
Circumstance | Penalty floor, per worker per calendar day |
Good faith mistake, promptly and voluntarily corrected | No floor applies |
Otherwise | $40 |
Penalties assessed within the previous three years on a separate contract | $80 |
Violation the Labor Commissioner determines was willful | $120 |
Back wages are separate and mandatory. Subdivision (a)(2)(E) requires the difference between the prevailing rate and what was actually paid to go to each worker for each day.
Run it on one crew. Six workers clear a municipal utility's distribution line in Los Angeles County for twenty working days, paid the Tree Maintenance Tree Trimmer rate of $36.37 against a line clearance rate of $67.13.
The gap is $30.76 an hour, $246.08 per worker per eight-hour day, and $29,529.60 across the crew and the month. Penalties attach to each of those twenty days for each of the six workers, which is $4,800 at the $40 floor and $24,000 at the $200 ceiling. The classification decision was made once, on a bid sheet, months earlier.
A prime can limit its exposure for a subcontractor's underpayment, and subdivision (b) lists the price of that limit. The subcontract must include a copy of section 1775 and of sections 1771, 1776, 1777.5, 1813 and 1815. The prime must monitor payment by periodic review of the sub's certified payroll records. It must take corrective action on becoming aware of a failure, including retaining funds. It must obtain an affidavit signed under penalty of perjury before final payment. Those four are flow-down obligations the prime performs itself.
Further reading
Public works contractor registration with the DIR: The registration number the awarding body has to report before the first day of work.
Certified payroll and the DIR XML format: What the classification on the determination becomes once it reaches a payroll record.
Flow-down clauses in a vegetation subcontract: The five Labor Code sections a prime has to copy into the subcontract to limit its own liability.
Frequently asked questions
Does prevailing wage apply to line clearance work for PG&E or Southern California Edison?
Usually not. Labor Code section 1720(a)(1) excepts work done directly by a public utility company pursuant to order of the Public Utilities Commission, and an investor-owned utility's own vegetation program runs on that exception. The determinations on this page bite when the buyer is a public agency: a municipal utility, a city street tree contract, a district clearing its own right of way, or a grant-funded fuel reduction project. The coverage question is decided under section 1720 and, where it is arguable, by a coverage determination from the Director.
Which determination covers a crew cutting brush along a road with a distribution line over it?
It depends on what the crew is cutting for. The Tree Trimmer (High Voltage Line Clearance) scope of work states that it 'COVERS WORK FOR MAINTENANCE OF HIGH VOLTAGE DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSMISSION ELECTRICAL LINES ONLY.' Roadside brush cut for fuel load, with the conductor overhead but not the reason for the cut, is not line clearance work. Where a single work order mixes both, the safe reading is that hours spent achieving conductor clearance are paid at the line clearance rate.
If the rate goes up during the contract, who absorbs it?
Whoever the contract says, but the obligation to pay the new rate is not negotiable. A determination carrying double asterisks after its expiration date must be updated on the following date. SC-102-X-20-2026-1 expires June 30, 2027 with double asterisks and carries four annual increases through July 1, 2030. A unit price set in 2026 and held flat to 2030 absorbs $7.70 an hour of increase on a base total hourly rate of $38.57.
Can a bidder challenge the classification the agency put in the bid documents?
Yes, and the window is short. Labor Code section 1773.4 lets any prospective bidder file a verified petition with the Director within 20 days after commencement of advertising of the call for bids. The awarding body must then extend the bid closing date until five days after the Director rules. The Director's determination is final, becomes the determination of the awarding body, and is included in the contract.
Do health and pension contributions count toward the rate?
Yes, as a credit. Labor Code section 1773.1(c) states that employer payments are a credit against the obligation to pay the general prevailing rate of per diem wages. A contractor making no qualifying contributions pays the whole total hourly rate in cash. The credit cannot reduce the straight time or overtime wages found to be prevailing.
