workers. regardless of the industry, though, the vast majority of workers cheated out of minimum- wage are our most vulnerable immigrant workers. but the olse, as you said, cannot do this alone. we have established a strategic collaborations with other city agencies. we work closely with the city attorney's office when legal interpretations are needed, when we are faced with opposing counsel, or in the hearing process. we are the only government agency that i know of that contracts and funds a collaborative of community-based organizations. our contract is with the chinese progressive association, the filipino community center, and pride at work. the community collaborative does outreach and education, and each

agency is responsible for a certain number of referrals of claimants to the olse. we partner with the department of public health, where we use their abatement hearing process to request permit revocation of violators who have not made their employees hole after either signing a settlement agreement or getting a hearing officer decision. we partner with the treasurer and tax collector's office where we can refer unpaid debts to the city to their collections department. we have partnered with the small business assistance center, who helps us hammer home that compliance with san francisco labor laws is essential for the success of a new small business, and we have partnered with the san francisco police department to provide a uniformed presence for olse on job site visits and take a united approach to human

trafficking cases. we do have challenges. there is a statistic in the legislative analyst's report that a minimum wage cases are resolved by the olse in a median of 23 days. at the dlse, a case would probably not even be assigned a case number in the length of time. a significant number of cases are resolved within a day or two, but sometimes, cases have complicated pay schemes. sometimes, cases raise issues for which we need legal guidance, involve uncooperative employers, or they're difficult attorneys, and they are not resolved as promptly as they should be. can we do better? yes. occasionally, we're dealing with businesses that are closed and individual owners our judgment- proof, and we just cannot collect back wages or penalties owed. in closing, i am proud of our record. we are constantly looking for ways to be more effective and

more efficient as we try to make the best of our resources. i am appreciative of the time that the legislative analyst put into their review. we have already instituted a number of their recommendations related to our record keeping. i appreciate the efforts of the supervisors and your aides to prioritize the issue of wage theft and how we can end it, and i fully support the efforts of the progress of worker alliance to turn the tide from wage theft to wage justice. supervisor campos: i think we have a quick question. supervisor farrell: thank you for the work that you and your department do. i know there has been discussion about how the olse has been underfunded over time, but at the same point, my understanding is your responsibilities have truly ballooned during that time. i wonder if you could talk about your personal thoughts as the

head, whether the current staffing levels are adequate to do with what you are basically tasked with doing. i would love to hear that. >> thank you, supervisor. we started out as an agency and forcing one law with a staff of three. when the minimum wage ordinance was passed, there was no funding dedicated to its enforcement, and we rededicate -- another unit was merged into the olse that wasn't forcing the living wage and living hell ordinances, and we dedicated their resources -- that was in force in the living wage and living health ordinances. health care was passed, and no staff was provided. i believed it was last year that the board fought hard to get an additional staff person added for health care, and that was a

hard struggle in the ad that process. it ended up that we were not able to fill it until we could show that we had raised an additional $100,000 in penalties to do so, which we have done now two years in a row, but we still have not fill that position. we also have a vacant position -- we have a very flak work chart -- supervisor campos: you have not filled the position? because a lot of heavy lifting was done at the board to make sure that happen. >> what i did instead was i took an investigator from prevailing wage and moved them over to health care. about three years ago, there was a deputy director position that was cut, so i have no assistance -- assistants or deputy. six months ago, our one senior

analyst -- there is me, there is one clerical position, and there's 14 investigators. we had a senior analyst, who many of you know was an aide to a board member previously, and we have been unable to back fill that position. yes, if we could just fill our two vacant positions, that would be an enormous help. effective enforcement of all of san francisco's ground breaking labor laws is very challenging with our current staffing. supervisor campos: thank you. why don't we hear from the budget analyst? to provide context of my office asked the budget analyst to do an assessment of how the olse was doing in terms of meeting its very challenging mandate, with the very clear

understanding that they have very limited resources, and, so, i think that supervisor farrell 's question is appropriate in terms of understanding where things are. why don't we hear briefly from the budget analyst? >> thank you, supervisor. good afternoon, supervisors. i am from the budget and legislative analyst's office, and i am joined by my colleague, who assisted with some follow-up analysis. i will briefly present some highlights from the comparative analysis we conducted on labor standards enforcement san francisco and at the state level. we were asked by supervisor campos to compare the city and state investigative and hearing process is for employee minimum wage claims. we were also asked to compare

the assessment of penalties and the collection of wages and penalties. finally, we were asked to identify best practices and inefficiencies at both agencies. this slide -- some of these issues have been talked about, but this gives you a little bit of background. the office enforces seven ordinances, including the minimum wage ordinance, which was enacted in 2003 by the voters. the office received 75 minimum wage claims in 2009 and allocates a portion of fixed staff to minimum wage cases. our analysis came up with three main findings. our first finding was that case processing is lower than the state, specifically the average time between the receipt of

minimum-wage client until a formal hearing takes place an average of 788 days in san francisco, but only 200 days for the state. the average is 45 cases that have gone to a hearing that do not represent the entire caseload. this contrasts with the investigations that cannot go to a hearing. some hearings were resolved in favor of the claim that took a average of 67 days. >> you talked about the averages here. what is the median? >> i do not know if i have the median for all of the cases in front of me. this represents up until the time we did our analysis. this represents a very small

portion. >> our numbers seem much different comparatively. is it one or two cases blowing up the average? is the average right around 788? >> it is my understanding that there was one case that took a lot longer. >> there was one case that took about four years. the median is 524 days. there was one case that took about four years. i think it was about 1.5-2 years for all of these cases. >> you take that one out and what is the average? >> i could probably get that to you after the meeting. >> i would love to understand the details of this. if is an anomaly, we want apples to apples cases.

>> the state takes a different approach to processing and investigating minimum wage cases. the state takes a more hands-off approach. they use employer self-audits. when settlement is not possible, they administer formal hearings on their own court. the burden of proof is more on the claimant. they investigate payroll. they investigate more when they are made aware of more compacted workers. the state has mandatory time lines for claims. they also have a 120-day deadline for holding formal hearings. san francisco does not have time lines for an initial review or

holding formal hearings. our second main finding was that san francisco collections of wages and penalties is at a higher rate than the state. recordkeeping could improve. we found that between january 1 and november 15, olse collected 15% of what was assessed in that period. the state had only collected about 19% assessed in that period. they do not maintain a record of employment on plan. our last finding specifically, we found that olse does not provide reports to supervisors on the implementation of the minimum wage ordinance, despite the requirement to do so.

our recommendations for case processing include suggesting that the board of supervisors' request that the city attorney work with the director to draft amendments to the ministry of code to add timeline for initiating the investigations and including the hearing process. we suggested that the board requests working with the city attorney to reform the hearing process by simplifying the hearing that preparation requirements and by changing the administrator code to shift to the employer by allowing a default judgment based on the audit findings, which are contained in their letters of determination. we also consider that the board consider amending the admin

code. we also had a recommendation on transparency and general practices at olse. our recommendation is that the board provide a report to the board of supervisors. we have recommended sdata points -- recommended data points that could be reported. after our report, several questions were raised. i will go over two of these questions that go to the heart of the concerns today. aside from taking on multiple

claimants, why do the minimum wage hearings take so long? we found this question difficult to determine due to a record keeping not being as comprehensive or consistent as we would have hoped. we found that more specifically, olse does not have a way to track reasons for delay. we did find that some delays in scheduling hearings were due to the failure of certain employers failing to comply with the investigations. the hearing officer requires some hearing steps. we looked at the amount of time spent in the process. 86% of the time, the time was spent on the investigations. 14% was spent on hearing

preparation. supervisor farrell: in terms of your analysis of record-keeping, i am assuming that is a staffing level issue. >> correct. i also believe that there is some minor tweak that could be made within the database system to help with that process. >> from my perspective, if you have barely staff to keep up with the investigations, i can see why you would choose on hat -- choose handling the cases rather than reporting. it is a question of making sure that there are resources given to make that happen. >> the average of those other four cases it is less than a year. it is 363 days.

>> the second question i just wanted to share. what are the costs of bringing a case to a hearing? we found that the city attorney and the comptroller's office and staff time and overhead, the total city cost for these hearings, for all five hearing since 2003 has cost 300 -- $330,000. the city had only charged $215,000 or so of that. that is partially due to the fact that the hearing officer has some power over what is charged to the employers during the hearing. that is not completely up to olse. that concludes my presentation.

>> a real quick -- a real quick one. did you go back to where you are talking about the burden of proof? you are talking about that on the state level deeper and of proof is largely -- is on the workers. some benefits of the burden of proof is on the employer. hearing a lot from worker's organizations, it is an unfair playing field with labor law in the u.s. the burden is too much on the workers to prove that they were violated and wage theft had occurred. you are looking to shift the burden more towards the employer

and that is when the city is changing the administration towed by shifting to the employer by allowing the judgment based on the letters of determinations. are there other places where the burden can be shifted more towards the employer? for instance, when they claim they do not have time records. you could allow staff more time and resources to move forward with quicker justice for workers. >> one of the tools that they used to encourage employer cooperation are of those citations. there are three of them. one of our recommendations was to add an additional citation. i think that by adding that or considering increasing the citation fine could help encourage those employers to

cooperate in the process and shift more of the financial risk to those employers. supervisor farrell: a quick question. i thank you for your reports as well and all of your analysis. there is a lot of comparisons with the stat. my understanding is that the dlse has a limited functionality compared to our olse. our agency is tasked with a lot more in terms of doing investigations. there is a lot more comparative analysis. i am trying to get an apples to apples comparison. it is actually not the same thing and far from it. >> at the division of labor standards enforcement, there is

a wage unit, which does a lot of the same kind of work or processes individual claims. group claims are handled by a separate unit that takes a more active role. they do handle things differently and they are structured differently. >> if i make, i do not know if supervisor farrell had anything else. i understand the issue of limited resources. that is a big part of the problem. one of the things i am trying to understand is why only five cases went to hearing over a seven-year period. i understand that most cases settle. i think it was 97%. i do have a concern of how that could be perceived by workers

who find themselves in this situation. this is a smaller number of cases. in the number of cases where there is able -- recalcitrant employer who is unwilling to cooperate, where the case needs to be taken to a hearing, where you only have five hearings, that is the problem as i see it. even though we are not comparing apples to apples, you are still talking about five and then hundreds. do you get a sense of why only five cases? why are we there. >> i think that goes a little bit back to the different types of waves -- ways the agencies do the investigations.

they are able to go in and audit payroll records. maybe they could back the employers more into a corner. using the citations as encouragement as a stick to encourage employers to settle earlier rather than later, because citations to increase overtime. in some cases, there is an avoidance of trying to go through the hearing process. it is going to take a lot more resources and a lot more time. >> reading this report, that is what struck out for me and stood out. if going to a hearing is so labor intensive and you have very limited resources, i see why you would not go to a hearing that often. there is so much volume that you

have to deal with. to the extent, i think it is true that we have an objective that those recalcitrant employers are held accountable, which is why the process is in place. to have that accountability, we need to give olse the ability to have the bodies and resources to have time to work on these cases. that is what stood out for me. why do we not hear from marcy who is the director of the women's rights clinic at the golden gate university of law. thank you for being here and thank you for your patience. >> what i would like to do is to speak about a couple of cases and to also speak briefly about

the district attorney's office. i have been working in one form or another on these wage issues. i want to speak about a case where i would commend olse for they have operated and some concerns. i am a lawyer on the case that was referenced to. i have tremendous respect for the staff. they are all profoundly committed to iissues of wage theft. some of that muni overtime money would be much appreciated. >> can you speak about the individual publicly? >> sure.

>> this was a case in which olse investigated a minimum wage violations. they vigorously investigated and it resulted in a relatively prompt payment of over $22,000. my client was then fired and i handled her retaliatory firing. that was then reported to ice. immigration and customs enforcement resulted in the detention of her husband on a completely fabricated charges that he was a child molester and a rapist. as a government agency interfaced with ice and work to track down the source of the report and traced the letter from ice back to the employer.

the agency went above and beyond what they needed to do to give some teeth to their anti- retaliation provisions. i came back in 2005 with the case that took such a long time. this was the case of an in-home care giver that works 24/7 and earned $100 per day. that is about $4 per hour. i brought the claim to olse. i was particularly concerned because in this case, st. mary's hospital pay the agency because the patient had been injured in the hospital. >> was at $100 a week? >> per day. she worked 24 hours a day.

they publicly advertised for 24 -- -- 24 hours services for $150 per day. they would hang leaflets all over the city like a chinese take-out leaflets. i brought her for those reasons. it took 4.5 years to get the case to a hearing. the city attorney did an excellent job in the hearing when it eventually went to hearing with over $150,000 awarded to the city and the client. it is getting onto a year later and there is nothing selected and no enforcement action taken. they are in the review process. whatever the reason for this, this is a broken system. this is justice denied. justice delayed is justice denied. my client has not seen a penny

of the money. the hearing officer cut the penalties because it took so long to investigate it. the state refused to reopen a parallel plan because it took so long that they purged the file and they do not have it anymore. we need more resources if this kind of delay is taking place. wherever those resources need to come from, a minimum wage ordinance that does not provide the staff resources to get things to hearing promptly with recalcitrant employers is not a proper ordinance. i do not think there could be a better example of why more resources need to go to this agency. that is both good and troubling experience says, not personally with the people at the agency. i do think that when something i do think that when something lasts so long, there is a bit