in our office and three criticals and the new one collection manager assigned three clerks and the new hire collection supervisor hire six collection officers and we have prop f still works as a consultant and coming back as a consultant. we have six people doing one -- so i don't know what is going on. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> thank you supervisors. i am daily butler. as mara said a while ago i was fortunate to serve on a committee of 30 women and two guys when we did the original pay equity study and it was 1981. what i did i put supervisor mar asked. i put all the classifications into a computer. the city didn't have

a computer and attached by race and sex and attached appropriate salaries to them and by the way the mayor, mayor feinstein, said that amount of job classifications was absurd and we didn't need that many. since then a thousand have been added and to many to replace classifications that were getting pay equity. my wife was 1406 and that was added to specifically a joid pay equity. then what happened? it was shocking actually. more than half of the women were in the four lowest paid classifications in the city. if the class was 75% -- excuse me, 75% or more women they earned 74% more than the average for

all women and a cost a women to be more a woman of color. i will close by saying 30 years of pay equity doesn't make up for century of wage discrimination and racial discrimination and wage setting. thank you. >> good afternoon. my name is [inaudible] and thank you for this time. i work at san francisco general hospital radiology department for 24 years and i would like to know where did you get your comparable to radiology techs that we make 15% more? we work in san francisco general hospital. it's a level one trauma center. i invite you to come. i will exchange job with you for one week to see what you do for you guys, for the

citizens of san francisco. there are a lot of people that lost their job they come over there. there are a lot of people they get into traditional accidents we take care of them. >> >> i hope you're not one of them or your family but when you come you're opening a brand-new hospital. how are you going to employ that hospital with the way you're going? this is not going to work. people are leaving. we can't retain people. this is not pushing paper. we are dealing with people's lives there. when people come with gunshot wounds, stab wounds, horrible car accidents and we save lives everyday. we don't sit behind desks. we deal with people's lives and for you to say that we are making more money than we're supposed to. i don't think that is right. you compare us to other people that they are living in counties over

100,000. we live in san francisco. we work over here and we work for the city of san francisco. i hope you reconsider and if you please go look at humanity. what is humanity means? you can google it too. thank you. >> board of supervisors good afternoon. my name is that rhea geon and also a seiu union activists and last night i was here at city hall experiencing what felt like i had time traveled back several decades and i have experienced the several decades so i know speak of. i was part of a group of sisters that we're trying to channel the spirit of rosy of

riveter and we were carrying signs that we carried many decades ago channeling the spirit of martin luther king, a lot of our feminists that moved and pushed for pay equity and gender balance, and i was kind of surprised that here in san francisco especially in these halls that we were actually having to do this, but as somebody said our union is vigilant about protecting the rights of our members, but i also hope you hear the comments of my others brothers and sisters that will remind you we're diligent about projecting the quality of service and the quality of life here in san francisco. we want to make sure that you don't short change the

workers or preclude others from coming here to be part of building up san francisco and i think it's also disingenuous to put things back in the union's face as far as our protecting or persuing other priorities and not wage increases because if that were the case, and i'm not a scientist, but if that was the case, then if we were successful in the wage increases we would be talking about classifications in jeopardy and the union is protecting the rights. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> i am robert morales and i clean this building and i am the rep for the cus dode ans. i feel this list is wrong and the wrong positions are on here. i

don't believe that we're over paid employees. i believe that this is another list starting from the top. maybe city attorneys, the treasurer and down because that's where i believe they're over paid, and just to conclude this i'm a native san francisco. i have been here over a half everyone -- century and i don't believe the list should be in existence and if you want to my list i have a list and i have ideas on -- i believe this is a money thing, and i believe maybe some day after i retire maybe i should run for mayor because i have ideas on generating a pot of money for the city, millions and millions of dollars that could be in the pot where we

could never tell the employees we're cutting them or be in the red. thank you very much and god bless. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good afternoon supervisors. thank you for having this hearing. my name is charla grimes and i work at general hospital, but prior to that i'm a single mother. i have lived here in san francisco all my life. i went to school here and i was on welfare. i worked my way up from welfare and went to school, city college, and all the schools here in san francisco, and worked my way up to the mayor's office. i had the opportunity and the great pleasure of working for two mayors here in san francisco.

now, i'm at general hospital working with a bunch of amazing people and hard working people, and it's the hardest job that i ever had in my life. i'm a health worker too. i am on that list as well. i had to leave san francisco because i couldn't live here anymore. i had section eight and i had to give it up because even with section eight i couldn't live here anymore because this city is so high cost of living. i worry about this. i worry about you cutting our pay, cutting my pay. i feel that i won't be able to come to work to get here to work because everything else is going up. bart and everything else and our checks are going down,

and please supervisors and department of human resources please reconsider this. if you can just take it all off the table. i only make $54,000 a year. how can you live in san francisco with that? and i had federal aid and i still couldn't do it so please take a look at that, and i used to live down the street from the supervisor here in the western edition and i can't live here anymore and all i want to do is come to work like the rest of my fellow workers and do the best job they can, but by you taking our money and degrading us -- >> thank you. >> what kind of job can we do? >> thank you very much for sharing that. thank you. next speaker please. >> supervisors, larry bradshaw vice president of seiu. if i

came before the committee and roll back a civil rights gain i wouldn't come and say i'm going to turn the clock back to the bald old days. instead of i would muddle the conversation and department has done a good job at doing that. let me talk about whether union agreed to this. we had a modest proposal to lift of women and people of confirm. the city has a proposal to lower these wages. under the charter the arbitrator is forced to chose between the city's proposal and the union's proposal. he has to pick one or the other. and prior to arbitration they put on a mediator hat and i think this is a good compromise. if you don't accept it you have the risk of getting the other proposal and

we acquiesce to this to avoid that outcome but we said we would never negotiate with the pay equity gains we have made. regarding the market. i encourage to you look at the survey you got prepared by the union in 1999. it's in your packet and they said we surveyed the surrounding bay area and these bay equities classifications have been lifted up by 20%. that is a sign of success because they were under valued by 20%. now two and a half decades later department of human resources looks at the same survey and the classifications are 20% market. of course they are. we set to do that because the market discriminates against the classifications and i will end on this point. if you don't acknowledge the labor market is racialized and genderrized -- if

you don't address those questions then you will allow racial and gender discrimination to continue and that's why we need enforcement of all labor laws including equal pay for equal work. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. are there any other members of the public who would like to comment? please come forward. anyone else -- please come forward. anyone else who would like to comment please line up on that side of the room too. >> good afternoon supervisors. i just want to thank you for convening this hearing and taking the time to do this. i really appreciate it. my name is michael ton and i am a seiu member and i am not affected by the cuts at least not yet. i guess you heard a lot of good testimonies. i want to say one thing too is the side effects of what happens. i can tell you from working at the department of department of public health when they did the

cuts to the cna's and contrary you had a hard time hiring people. people were lest inclined to work because they realized if i am making the same money in another hospital and go somewhere else. for one, a lot of the members with families cannot afford a home in the city. they can't raise kids here. they have to live outside of the area and a lot live in solano county and they have to cross two bridges and frankly it's $10 a day for tolls and not counting gas. a lot of the single workers here -- i don't know if you saw the last thing but the average one bedroom is $1,800 a month and it's hard to make ends meet. a lot of members stay in the city to get

second jobs and those that move out will get a job at a hospital closer to home and what a lot of cna's did and i will make the assignment amount than san francisco it's cheaper to work somewhere else. >> thank you. >> thank you. if there are no other members of the public who would like to comment we can close public comment. okay. public comment is closed with the gavel down. okay. i want to thank members of the public who were here to speak. i think there were at least a couple members i haven't seen before and spoken and one said i never come to the podium before want i think that shows what is at stake here for the people in the room. we are seeing a rise in the cost of living and even with the salaries that we have that

the city says are well compensated don't meet what is out there in terms of the day to day expenses including rent and food and child care and all the other expenses that we have. i really feel that the city should live up to its standard it had in place decades ago that would say that we would actually provide pay equity for people in the classifications that are similar in terms of the amount of work they have, the education, and the skills they bring to work. i think it's a standard that should trump anything to do with the market, anything to do with other what jurisdictions are doing and that should be the study and jurisdiction to jurisdiction and not to the private sector and i think there are distinctions around that. we have made gains over years that actually are gains we made in terms of what people can earn and reverse

discrimination over the years. the gains have met we put forward policies that lift up minimum wage standards, providing health care, make sure we have sick leave and work place standards that allieve a lot of discrimination that people feel historically and i don't think it makes sense to make decisions to reverse that or change the standard how we provide pay equity and throw away what we have done in the past. i believe we are looking at classifications that heretofore exist but things on new hires and lower salary for the new hires coming in. that to me doesn't set pay with what is commensurate with the high cost of living here in san francisco and we will see the decisions will fall disproportionately with women and people of color who find it harder to live in san francisco. i know the department has a

large task on its hands and how to make decisions and negotiate. the union as well as those things to negotiate a fair contract as well. it could go to arbitration. that to me is outside of my purview as a supervisor and i get the contracts after they're negotiated but i believe it's important to highlight, to put out there that the world view that we should be looking at or acknowledging that we're doing away with that it's a view that is based on comparable worth and people with pay equity and women and people of color can have the highest standard they can and not reversing the gains from the past. that's what i believe we have here before us today and where to go as a city and not backtrack on that. i want to thank the department of human resources for being here. i know we might have a disagreement to move forward but i hope there is flexibility how

the contract can be negotiated and we can make sure that we can have a new standard that could be in place that can be agreed upon by the city and by stakeholders in the work force. >> thanks supervisor avalos. should we table this hearing or how would you like to handle it. >> (inaudible). >> okay. if we could file item one. do that without opposition. so moved. mr. clerk, do we have any other items? >> that's completes the agenda for today. >> thank you. meeting is adjourned