THOUSAND OAKS : Construction Workers Picket Building Site

About 45 construction workers picketed a building site on West Olsen Road Tuesday, protesting what one of them described as substandard pay for the framers working at the site.

Deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department in Thousand Oaks were called to the scene at 10:15 a.m., authorities said. No arrests were made during the two-hour demonstration near Cal Lutheran University. The demonstration broke up about noon.

Dan Langford, an organizer with the Southern California District Council of Carpenters who was present at the picket, said the action was part of a larger protest by area framing carpenters aimed at creating a base wage for framing work.

Framers build the wooden skeletons of houses, assembling the walls and roofs. They make an average of $156 per day in Southern California, Langford said.

Langford, however, said he did not know how much Ruffco Construction of Ventura, the construction company at the Thousand Oaks site, paid its framers.

Ruffco employees declined comment.

Langford said the work site supervisor had complained that picketers had thrown rocks at his men.

“I told him, ‘We’re not about violence,’ ” said Langford, who said he did not see any rocks thrown. “I explained to him, ‘You point the guys out, and I’ll take care of them.’ But he didn’t want to do that.”

The picketers, he said, were non-union framers from both Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley. Workers at the site are building houses that will be listed for $200,000 and up.

A group of 80 carpenters, working with the Carpenters Union Local 2361 of Orange, protested another Thousand Oaks construction site on Rancho Conejo Boulevard April 12.