tv [untitled] May 14, 2011 9:00pm-9:30pm PDT
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i can understand why some employers would pay lower wages than what are required. unfortunately, i did not even get paid the wages of was agreed to get paid. i work. i work hard. i appreciate the help of the city. i came to the office. my case is in process. thank you. chairperson campos: i wanted to make sure he had gone through the olac. thank you. >> [speaking spanish]
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they claim has been resolved. i appreciate that. thank you. chairperson campos: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i am with the chinese progressive association. in march 2010, over a year ago, 14 workers came to cpa asking for help. they said they had not been paid three to 10 months of wages. they also said there was minimum wage violation. some of them were paid as low as $4 per hour. we found out this restaurant, located in chinatown -- we found
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out this restaurant is a repeated violator. only three years prior, the olsc caught this employer and made them pay the workers. after a month of collective action with the workers, we are going to meet up with cpa and members of the board of supervisors. we finally put pressure on the employer, who paid back with the workers were promised, $5 an hour. we encourage the workers to continue with minimum wage claims of the can get $9.79 per hour. however, most of the workers were afraid of continuing the claim. for those who did consider continuing the claim, they were retaliated against. earlier this year, the employer went to the workers' current jobs and also called the workers at 1:00 at night, telling them they needed to withdraw their
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minimum wage claims. this also affects the housing situation for the workers. one of the workers can only afford to live in the garage of one of her relatives. it looks like, "you are bringing trouble home. i am going to could do -- kick you out of my house." they are still looking for housing. neither her or her husband has been able to find a job right now. the olsc has not yet assessed a penalty against the employer. this sends a message to abusive employers that i can retaliate against workers and do not have to pay a penny. this is allowed in san francisco. we hope that enforcement can be effective and workers are protected. supervisor mar: thank you for relaying this important case. was this the great oriental restaurant case? >> yes. supervisor mar:
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can you comment on the actions once the employer was retaliating? how did olsc staff respond and what should be done to improve the system for worker justice? >> to my knowledge, they spoke to the employer and the employers said, "i will not do it again." so far, no penalty has been assessed for the employer. i think we need to suspend the penalties and be more aggressive about it. the employer can appeal and start having a 10-day grace period to do whatever he wants. after he resolve the issue, meaning he promised to not retaliate again, so far no penalty has been assessed. chairperson campos: next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors.
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i am arlene tran. i have taught esl and citizenship to many limited english speakers in san francisco. i have heard enough of worker rights abuses. i am here to support them. the good as the problem of wage that is finally coming to the attention of the board of supervisors to the advocacy of many grass-roots organizations who showed up for this historic meeting. a supervisor campos mentioned, this affects mostly the lowest wage earners, who are rights ane therefore vulnerable, especially during this critical high employment. . i have personally helped to refer some of my students to the different city departments to retreat back wages and to get worker information. many of my students were afraid to complain for fear of retaliation, and if they leave
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the jobs, there are many others who will line up for the opportunity. years ago, i remember personally helping an egregious case where my student was working for $500 a month in a hair salon in chinatown. preemployment denied she a to work there and even provided fabricated evidence to counter that claim. after she lost the first round, i helped to get a pro bono lawyer to retrieve her wage because she kept careful recording of her work hours and had witnessed. since the department and newcomer parents also register their students, i am hoping that we will provide information in the intake offices so that parents will get that. with the help of all the different organizations and ethnic media, i hope the wage
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system will no longer -- [tone] supervisor campos: thank you very much. next speaker? >> i am speaking for a whole slew of organizations involved and garment plants socially, ok? i don't need to rehash that there is a great need for you to act on this enforcement because in terms of employment and justice, and working conditions. me, i am focusing on the future of this city because right now, everything we're talking about, dealing with the lowest stratum of our economic pyramid, they are the least empowered. they always feel helpless and think they cannot do anything. they are very apathetic. they're vulnerable and they are
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in non-participatory in the community. ok? oftentimes, these people have problems within the family. i feel that to enforce the sleeper, doing this labor enforcement, the great number of people shows that you care. it shows these people, they don't have -- if they are powerless, they have hope. in the city, you can retain the trust for the future of the city and the community. legislatively, regulatory coming in terms of resources, and what is more, it is a grassroots
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organization. in order to -- [tone] supervisor campos: thank you. thank you, sir. >> my name a charlotte 9 attorney -- my name is charlotte and i am an attorney. we're a nonprofit legal services agency. we hold workers' rights clinics around the bay area and here in san francisco four nights a week and we see thousands of workers a year. minimum wage, overtime, and the thing that is constructive as we see workers who have already quit from their jobs. we do not see as many workers coming forward who still work at the places they're complaining about the employment processes
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at. speaking with other nonprofit legal services in san francisco, non-profit agencies are completely overwhelmed. claims are frequently complex. the process is easier for the workers to go to run their own, but it is difficult to go through the process on their own. it forces us as attorneys too often advise clients in this circumstance that their choices are to proceed through the administrative process and complete their legal rights at the end, or take a settlement that the employment might offer earlier on, which we think causes workers to compromise on legal rights. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you very much. is there any other member of the public who would like to come forward? public comment is closed. colleagues, i don't know if we
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have any comment to that. a lot has been said today. let me just thank all the members of the public and the workers who waited so patiently throughout this hearing and who had the courage to come forward and speak about their own individual experiences in sharing very personal information, very painful information, which i think, more eloquent than anyone of us could upset,. to why this is such an important issue. the last thing that i would say is the ordinance that was introduced will be heard in the near future and we look forward to having a further discussion about what else can be done. i want to thank everyone who made this hearing possible, and this is simply an informational item. as i understand it, i don't
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think there is any action that needs to be taken, but to the extent that we -- we may need to follow up on this, i ask that we continue to the call of the chair. a motion to continue to the call of the chair, unless there is any objection. we passed that without objection. again, colleagues, anything else to add? thank you again. do we have any other business before this committee? >> no for the business. supervisor campos: meeting adjourned. thank yo
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>> we continue to make good progress all around in the program. our construction documents are 100% -- 100% of them are still on schedule to be delivered by the end of the year. since the bulk behalf we're doing now is involved construction, you hear more about our construction progress in a moment, but in the meantime, i did want to report that at our last board meeting, a member of the public asked about whether or not the transport authority could work with the various city agencies regarding pedestrian safety at the crosswalks in district six. and we know that the san francisco municipal transportation agency is working with supervisor kim in assessing the pedestrian safety priorities for the entire district, and we're also working with them as well on that. in addition, i did want to mention that, with respect to our construction and we'll have more of an update on that in a moment, but one of the things we've been removing are piles from the old transbay terminal
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foundation, and they've been removed what what will eventually be the buttress zone. they're made of a structure that's not commonly found anymore in the lumber market today. in keeping with our sustainability mission, one of the things that we were able to do is find entities that were willing to take the lumber and haul it off and recycle the wood, and one of the persons is taking the lumber away, is actually going to use it for a sailboat, so that's pretty interesting. you're also going to receive a presentation on the bus design with respect to our temporary terminal, everything is in good order, the temporary facility, and on the rail component, we continue meeting with cal train and high-speed rail on the design elements. and we're making good progress there. nance you has an update on funding. >> very briefly on our funding update, as we reported before, we have more than $800 million in allocations toward our phase one project of $1.6 billion.
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today we're going to do an action on your calendar to re-send some funding. we'll talk about that later. and then the other thing that we've been doing is continuing to look for additional sources of funds, and today on your agenda, we're going to be asking for permission to apply for some park funds for the city park. so we're continuing to do that, and we will continue to look for funding to back fill or to augment our phase two work as we go ahead. that's all i have for today. if you have any questions, i'll be happy to answer. >> i'd like to get our construction update. >> good morning, directors. steve rule with turner construction, construction management oversight. there we go. we had another great month of progress. we continue the demolition
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work, 46,000 hours now without any accidents or injuries to the workers. we completed the turnover of zone three, which used to be the old central portion of the old terminal to the subcontractor for staging of their shoring material that they've started construction on. and we completed the main demo on the bus ramps by completing the harrison overpass in the first week of may, so that is the end of our long closures and street closures there for the demolition. now it's just a lot of clean-up and processing of that material. with utility relocation package, good progress continues to be made with those. the natomis street sewer installation between free mount and first is completed, and the tie-in to the main sewer is in progress. water line snalmings is completed. -- installation is completed. and we anticipate that work, the natomis street utility relocation work being completed
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by the end of july. one of the other packages, 4.3 also good progress. we're working with sfwd on all the tie-ins and coronations of the water system there, anticipate completion at the end of august. 4.4 is water and sewer lines are in progress on natomis street between first and second. those water tie-ins will be done this week or next depending on scheduling with sfwd, and anticipated completion also in the end of august. 4.4 is natomis between first and second streets. i'm sorry, 4.5.1 is the ministry joint trench, sewer and water. and as of this last week, at&t started putting in their work into the joint trench, so we're almost off that area, and the final completion, with all the tie-ins, will be done in august as well. or end of july. and then the potholing work, 4.6, which is the work for sewer and sledge on beale street, is just getting started. that was approved, i believe at
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the last board meeting. and they have an anticipated completion of august. the temporary wall at 301 mission continues. they've put up the steel support. they've now completed the framing and will start putting the north face of the wall, the side that faces millennium, they'll start putting the plaster and metal panels and stone on. hopefully we'll be able to take down the temporary barricade and finish up that north face by the end of june. and finish up the whole project there by the middle of july. the transit center that buttresses the main thing going on there, and in zone four is the main work. they've been pulling piles, the wood piles that executive director just spoke about. we're about 70% to 80% through with that and should be completed by the end of next week. as i also said, they're staging their fabrication of their structural steel for their shoring system, shoring wall systems in the central area,
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and started refabbing all that. and they're starting the pretrenching this month for the shoring wall, so they'll be going around the entire perimeter of the project, removing any obstructions prior to the installation of the shoring wall, which is scheduled to begin at the end of may. again, the demolition timeline, we are scheduled to complete the original demolition by the first week in june. on your agenda today is the approval of a change order for evans brothers to do some additional building demolition, and that will add some time to the final completion of their contract, but the original contract completion or substantial completion is still scheduled for the end of june for the original demolition. we completed all that ramp work ahead of schedule, so we're excited about that, and as i said before, that stops us from having to close streets, which was the big risk there. here's last month's and this month's view of zone four,
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where they're working on the wood pile extraction. and the middle and west sections are zones three, two, and one, as you head west and see the change over that, and there's balance four starting to stage their equipment in the right hand photo to start building their steel support structures for their shoring wall. picture on the left shows where we were with the ramp demolition at the end of march and now through the first week in may. we're all the way up, and by may 3, they took down the harrison street overpass, and so all that rubble starting to get cleaned up and recycled. by the way, we've repsyched about 38,000 cubic yards of concrete, which, to put it in simpler terms, is about 10 to 11 olympic-sized swimming pools full of concrete. just a little fact. the removal of the bus ramp over folsom, there's a shot of that, and then the harrison street removal as well, they both went according to plan, and again, no injuries or incidents with the public. i mentioned utility relocation
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packages all winding up in july and august of this summer. with the exception of 4.2, which the pricing on that comes in tomorrow, i believe. and this is a continued sewer work on the joint trench work on minner, which is now where at&t is starting to put their portion of the joint trench work in. and the completion of it on second street. water and sewer work continues, howard first, free mount, natomis streets. and while i said the structural steel framing went up this last month, and when these pictures were taken, they were preparing for the metal framing that fills in between the white structural steel and will support the new exterior wall. it's a very heavy structure, but, you know, part of it is to prevent any vehicles from accidentally going into the hole that will be on the other side of it. and this is a shot of the controlled wood pile extraction in zone four, as i said, we'll
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be completing that at the end of next week. and the archaeologists that started below the 201 mission street building where the headquarters project office is got finished up this month, and there's one archaeology pit left to do at the west end of the project. and finally, just to give you an idea behalf you'll see next, if you come down and visit at the end of may, before the next board meeting will be the start of cdsm, or concrete deep soil mixed shoring wall system, and that will start in the far east end of the project, and that's a view of what the equipment will look like there. on the local labor side, demolition contractor has completed 46,000 hours, 41,000 of those being completed by local labor. and on the web corps and their trade subcontractor side, about 18,000 hours a day also with no incidents or injuries, and about 16,000 of those by local labor. that's the end of my presentation f. there are any
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i'm here to give an update on the bus storage project. sorry. i'm having technical difficulties with the power point here. it's been about a year since we have given an update on the bus storage project. so my update this morning, i've got about a dozen slides. we'll talk about -- give an overview, an update, talk about the current layout.
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