I know that California is ...er...different. Still, this is just too much:

On volunteers, state is up a creek without a clue

A law originally meant to protect union wages has been redefined to prohibit volunteer labor on public projects. Out of the window goes Adopt a Highway, student volunteers, and neighborhood or work groups pitching in to help with projects like neighborhood beautification, stream bed clean-up, etc.

It actually began with a group of students who received school credit for cleaning up a stream bed. A union rep bitched about it and the state fined the nonprofit group that organized the cleanup.

Redding is also struggling with the labor bureaucracy in its effort to build a new city park, in part with volunteer help. A member of a Sonoma County library advisory board tells me that his group fears local Rotary Club members won't be allowed to landscape the library's grounds. And it's possible that groups such as Habitat for Humanity, which use volunteer labor to build homes for the poor, could be swept up by the same regulation.

The problem started in the 1930's when the state enacted legislation that effectively granted all public works projects to union labor. Non-union contractors were forced to pay union wages to their employees if they wished to bid on public projects. In 2001 the state changed the law to define a public project as just about anything that got a dollar of taxpayer money.

So why can't this get fixed? It's pretty easy - get rid of the fucked up anti-market laws that unfairly penalize people who do not wish to surrender their autonomy to a socialist union construct. Since it's California we are talking about this will never happen. Another solution might be to specify that volunteer labor can be free. Only when people are paid money should the mandatory pay scales be used. That won't happen either though as the unions want anything that requires skill to be under the forcible pay restrictions. (Apparently at least one union boss thinks that cleaning up a stream bed is skilled labor.)

I'm just glad I'm in Georgia where I can get a bunch of my friends together and clean up a vacant lot if we want to. Not that we would, being lazy southern boys, but we could!

(Hat tip to Joanne Jacobs)