Case: the journeyman without a card
In one paragraph
Priya Raman hires the best electrician she has ever worked with: twelve years in the trade, most of it in another state, references that call back, and no California certification card. She assumes experience is the credential. Eight weeks later a Labor Commissioner field team walks a tenant-improvement job, asks each person on the lift for a card or a trainee registration, and gets neither from him. The law says that moment is presumed to be her violation. The case follows the referral to CSLB, the 60-day clock it starts, what Priya does in the first week to turn a willful violation into a corrected one, how her journeyman gets lawful (registered as a trainee under her supervision while his out-of-state hours are documented for the exam), and what the file looked like when the Board closed it. The names are invented; the statute is quoted.
The rule
Persons who perform work as electricians for a C-10 must be certified, or be a registered trainee under the direct supervision of a certified electrician who supervises no more than one such person, or a registered apprentice, or the licensee's qualifying person (Labor Code 108.2(a)-(b), (d)-(e), (g); 108.4(a)). Experience in the trade, in California or elsewhere, is not a substitute: it is the basis for sitting the exam, which for a general electrician requires 8,000 documented hours (DIR ECU). A C-10 that willfully employs uncertified persons faces license discipline, the Labor Commissioner refers cases to CSLB, which must open an investigation and act within 60 days, and failure to produce evidence of certification or trainee status on the job creates a rebuttable presumption of violation (108.2(h)-(j)).
Why it matters
The uncertified journeyman is the hire every growing C-10 is tempted to make, because the skill is real and the card looks like paperwork. The law treats the card as the point. This case is about how quickly the presumption lands, how the trainee route makes a skilled hire lawful in a week, and why 'willful' is the word that decides whether an inspection becomes a warning or a citation.