Steve Nutter brings to the Board extensive experience as a manager, negotiator, neutral, and attorney. Appointed to the Board by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in May 2010, he was unanimously confirmed by the City Council.

Commissioner Nutter and the other Board members manage and provide direct public oversight of the Public Works Department and its 5 Bureaus, whose 5,000 employees ensure that the City’s infrastructure is properly planned, designed, built, and maintained. He works closely with the Bureau of Contract Administration and its Inspector of Public Works, to address its mission, which includes inspecting more than $500 million in City public works projects each year, enforcing City ordinances (e.g. Contractor Responsibility) and state wage and hour laws, and administering construction contracts and project labor agreements (PLAs). In 2010-2011, he served on the City bargaining teams which negotiated landmark department-wide PLAs for Public Works and the Port, covering more than 140 projects, costing over $3.5 Billion, over a 5 year period.

Commissioner Nutter attended public schools in the City, graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Santa Barbara, earned a J.D. degree from Hastings College of Law, and was admitted to the State Bar in 1975. After law school, he served as law clerk for the chief federal trial judge in Sacramento, counsel to the Board at the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, and staff attorney with the California School Employees Association in San Jose.

In 1980, Commissioner Nutter returned to Los Angeles to work for the garment workers union, and for the past 30 years has represented factory workers, nurses, janitors, construction workers, and others in court, before administrative agencies, and at the bargaining table.

For almost 20 years, he worked with the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU, later UNITE), first as its Regional Counsel, and 5 years later as its Regional Director, International Vice-President, and a member of its General Executive Board. As its west coast director, he managed the union’s affairs in 5 states, handled major negotiations, directed organizing and legislative activity, and represented it on the Executive Boards of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the California Labor Federation.

During his tenure at UNITE, the union revived the anti-sweatshop movement, focused on organizing, and promoted immigrant rights. It forged labor-community coalitions, co-founded NGOs (like Sweatshop Watch), started up worker centers, and sued sweatshops.

In 1995, he worked closely with APALC, Thai CDC, and others to help win freedom and justice for Thai garment workers, enslaved at a barbwire-enclosed factory compound in El Monte, California.

In 1996, along with now U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and others, he helped lead the successful Proposition 210 initiative to raise the California minimum wage.

In 1999, he helped lead a labor-community coalition to legislative victory on AB 633, a “joint liability” bill making garment manufacturers vicariously liable for conditions in their contractors’ sewing shops, a first in the nation.

Later, he went to work for SEIU’s Health Care Action Campaign, where he led enforcement of innovative union-employer neutrality agreements with major hospital chains, which played a key role in the historic organization of tens of thousands of hospital workers at scores of hospitals. He also helped lead bargaining of first-time contracts with these chains, resulting in major gains.

Finally, just before joining the Board, he engaged in private practice with Reich, Adell & Cvitan, where he helped recover millions of dollars in back pay for construction workers, negotiated collective bargaining agreements, defended employees’ civil and work place rights, and provided legal guidance to unions and labor-management trust funds.