we can go onto our speakers. i have a number of speakers that are going to be presenting. first up will be emily morase and mara keely who has a lot of history about the worker and the city around comparable worth and followed by vickey callahan. then we go into q and a and have other speakers as well but after emily might need to open it up for public comment so we can someone from the public to speak at this part of the presentation. >> thank you very much supervisor avalos and thanks to members of the committee for inviting us today. i am going to give you a brief overview of comparable worth nationally and in san francisco. first slide please. so comparable worth

began in 1942 in terms of general order 16 issued by the labor board. basically the federal government decided to adjust wages for women to equal men doing work of comparable work and quality. you can imagine when the men were at war the women were doing the work. the order remedied was a job assessment to determine the value of the work so that's really the origin of the discussion. in 1955 the u.s. census bureau reported that women earned 64% of what men earned. in 1963 there was a federal equal pay act that was introduced that mandated equal pay with the following important exceptions. under the bennett

amendment allowed differentiation of payment based on one seniority, two, merit, three, productivity, or four, any other factor, so you can imagine employers went to look for justifications for pay inequities in terms of these things. 1964 title seven of the civil rights act prohibits discrimination of covered employers based on race, sex, national origin and 15 or more employees for each working day and in the calendar year and most employers are subject to this. next slide. in 1978 as was referenced the san francisco commission on women and women library workers conducted a study on city classifications and according to that study

women earned 69% of what men earned. notice it's not much higher than 1955. men worked in 1200 classes and women were concentrated under 500 classes. the conclusion of that report said men's jobs pay more with comparable education and experience. the context at the time there was a supreme court case and they ruled title seven covers wage discrimination whether or not the jobs are exactly the same or not, so it was considered a landmark decision. however, in the application of this court case since 1981 there has been a narrowing of the application. a lot of cases have used the bennett amendment to justify pay differentials based on gender, and actually in fact there have

been few successful cases of comparable worth violations. the seiu city committee on comparable worth was convened in 1981 as was referenced by supervisor avalos the board passed a resolution stating adopting a policy to erase pay inequities and based on race and sex and bringing the un classified positions towp charter and law. at the same time the state passed a senate bill and it's comparable statute but not clear whether it applies to charter city like san francisco. next slide. and then in 1984 mayor dianne feinstein issued a executive directive on equal pay for comparable worth and established a task worse with the city attorney, the manager of

personnel, controller, directer of human rights commission, and others. in connection with that the san francisco civil commission put together benchmarkos salaries and positions and san francisco comparable worth committee outlined -- released a report in 1984. next slide. between 1986 and 1989 as was referenced there was a vote of the people, a charter amendment on prevailing wages and pay equity. this amendment was provided for salary adjustments for classes that were historically occupied by minorities and women judged to be of equal in value and higher pay classes occupied strongly by non minority males

so that was proposition h. in the same year the mayor's task force issued their report and seiu and the city came to an agreement how to implement pay equity. in 1994 to 99 there was a move to collective bargaining where discussion about pay equity moved into a negotiation between the union and the department of human resources employee relations unit. meanwhile in 1998 san francisco became the first municipality in the world to adopt a local ordinance perfecting the principles of the un convention and end all discrimination against women and in this ordinance there is a provision

woman are able to get remiewnination and that in is the code. there was a review of the report on pay ecequity and said that 101 classes continued to receive pay equity leading to smaller gaps. the 12 year study said that study should be conducted since it was 12 years since the beginning of that project. and skipping ahead to today unfortunately continue to live with a pay gap according to the u.s. census, the survey, womens' median salary in san

francisco is just 84% of men's salaries. and then just a final slide in terms of what our commission and department has been focused on we're taking a broad view of gender equity in the work place and for the past three years we were focused on setting up a system of seven guiding principles including pay, but principle one is employment compensation. we go deep into measurables with employers who should have comparable worth and benefits and comparable work for all employees and we're working with some of the largest private sector like google, scrub, deloitte to encourage large employers to adopt these

principles. we will be launching a best practices launch that we will certainly invite you all too, and i failed to introduce my colleagues on the department. elizabeth who helped me with the slides today. i am happy to entertain your questions. >> thank you and thank you for your presentation. colleagues any comments or questions? supervisor mar. >> just real quick. doctor, from the study and 101 classifications were receiving pay inequities and i am wondering if the classifications in question. >> i haven't had a chance to study those closely really in terms of the negotiations. i would defer to my colleagues at the department of human resources. >> just from what you know about custodians, nursing assistants or other positions like the ones in the categories that are in

the proposal. what would be your guess on the impacts of the proposal? >> well, we have monitored every year department of human resources puts out an equal employment report that shows disaggregated data based on race and gender and there is high concentrations as was reviewed earlier in particular classifications and we're concerned about that. we've come up with recommendations how to better outreach to non traditional groups but i'm not in a position to comment in detail about the existing proposal. >> okay. thank you very much for your presentation. there is a member of the public who is part of our opening line up of speakers i would like to call up, so maybe at this point we can open up public comment, but just the one speaker from the

public and then we will go on to ms. callahan. >> sorry. i failed to acknowledge jane powers who did a lot of work and i want to thank mary howe and dennis mcglophlin who contributed to the report. >> thank you very much. so chair farrell we could open it up for comment. let's have the one speaker come up. i would like to call up mara keely who will give a presentation. >> thank you very much mr. chair and members of the committee. thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. hello old friends who i share a past with too on the other side of the table today. in 1980 and continuing to 1986 i was the point person for seiu on pay equity and i started with local 400. local

400 became 790 and today now it's 1021 i didn't go anywhere and had a lot of change and it was on pay inequities and thanks for the fact base summary of it is issues and paying a lot to the attention to the period i was here doing the work so i can skip that and make a couple of quick key points. first of all the 1981 declaration of city policy by this board that no longer would the city tolerate race discrimination based on race and sex was a policy separate to any implementation approach so in my view that is a long standing one today and any proposal to over turn it, roll it back by imposing discriminatory wages by

classifications with people of color and women is in not with the policy and you have to protect your rights and i am surprised it's on the board today and the board after hearing evidence based on years of study, two major studies. one referenced and conducted by our own gail butler who was a professor of economics. the board held hearings and took testimony so the policy is well reasond and continues. dianne feinstein as mayor acknowledged it and i want to say probably in my experience as a representative for public workers there was nothing more satisfying that san francisco and to my knowledge the only jurisdiction that made it both on race and sex. >> your time is up. i want to ask a question. >> is that what the buzzes was

about? >> yes they were and i'm going to ask you a couple questions about your experience on there. could you tell me what your title and role was and the experience was in the implementation process. >> yes, sir, i was legislative coordinator for the union and the allies on the legal community and the women community and other departments we worked together collaboratively and our job was documenting the problem, framing the policy, and then moving to implementation. in those days as today we had what sometimes i think as charter hawks. we know the deficit hawks in dc? well the people that say you can't do it because it's not in the charter were there then and now and that was our job basically to show that san francisco the policy would work here and that's what we did. >> thank you very much. >> i want the to ask what you were the findings of the study

you referenced? i know he had a connection with seiu-790. >> at the time daily was not working for 790 but we were attracted to his skills as an economists and basically what we did he ran the classifications that were 75% or more women and minority dominated, and ran them against classifications that didn't meet that criteria and then we applied internal equity judgment based on other studies done on comparable worth to identify benchmarks and job classifications that were directly comparable in knowledge, skill, education, experience, the usual criteria and we came up with a measurement where they were and how to correct them. >> thank you. >> and can i just have one question because i would like to comment on the two tee problem which never was in the problem

-- >> that was my next question. go ahead. >> it was never in the ready in 1981 -- not because it wasn't floated. then as now there were people that thought that market forces or surveys should trump internal equity, trump a policy of eliminating discrimination and those people did float the idea and shot down quickly by their own side because everybody knows that a two tier means you're not paying equal pay for equal work. how can you have comparable worth and for work of comparable value if you're under cutting the basics? so we never put it in our record at that time. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] next up i would like to call up nicky callahan, dr. callahan from the department of human resources. >> good afternoon supervisors.

nicky callahan, human resources director. thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and i am pleased to see some sold colleagues and it's nice to see you all. i want to start by introducing my team who is working with me on this project we're involved with seiu and i think has been mischaracterized on attack on comparable worth and i have the chief negotiator and martin grand and mary who is leading this process with seiu right now and steve who is our compensation manager and in charge of our data and collection of information that we use in all of our negotiations. what i would like to do i think reframe the discussion a little bi. i have been asked to speak to comparable worth and how it applies now and what is the

status in san francisco? and i think one of the challenges that we have comparable worth is has been replaced in san francisco. it doesn't mean it's open season on -- i think mara described and reimposing discriminatory wages and not target a group of employees which is improper and inappropriate and doesn't mean we're violating a check calculation by the board of supervisors in 1981 that there is no toleration of this. we take this very seriously. i'm going to talk about some of the initiatives we are engaged in to improve economic opportunity and the status of women and people of color in city employment. to the extent that we continue to have wage gaps it is our strongly held view these are the results what i refer to occupational segregation, that we are forced, we cannot

operate in a vac scpum to look at the market with wage setting and it's driven by the need to hire people, so what we need to do is make sure people have the opportunity to get jobs, to get into those classifications where the pay is better and be fair about that, so i'm going to touch on that. let me talk a little bit first about why we think we're here. in 2012 as i think you all know -- many of you voted on them. we negotiated new labor agreements with all of our miscellaneous unions so it was a huge labor project and san francisco was impressive and we were were able to over a 3% cola phase in which is unusual right now and that is a reflection of our commitment to recognize the fact that our employees need cost of living adjustments as prices go up,

and also the city's improved economic situation, so we're please body that. we offered all miscellaneous unions the same package. however some of them took it in different places. for example seiu members are earning slightly less in the year because they chose to put out a concession on helt r health premiums and we offer the same and balance that with what their internal needs are and unions make different decisions. some take the money and apply it for different purposes and that is the reason that some of the historical relationship between classifications no longer are maintained. our two largest seiu union and local 21 and small everybody unions came forward with requests to provide in addition cost of living

market wage adjustments for certain classifications. they were significant in many cases and because of the short time line we have under the charter and our need to present completed agreements to the board by -- within the mayor's budget and our obligation to file by may 15 we deferred those conversations to what i would call mid-contract processes so we're engaged with local 21. we're looking at wages above and below the market. yesterday we had a arbitration process with a teamster unit on the subject and we have another one that has a process and talk about cost neutral wage adjustment and how do we fund that within the contract? and within seiu the decision was made to have a process which ends in binding arbitration with the exception

of two classifications. to the extent that this process results in any wage increase for sheriff cadets or food service workers they will go into effect then and the rest july 1, 2014 and after frankly a another round of contract negotiations so we agreed. we used language in the contract with the assistance of the mediator and executed an contract agreement which provides that we will look at both whether classes are above the market or below the market. i would note that i don't think it would be responsible of us to say that we will only look at the market when it produces wage increases which seems to be the outcome if not the expressed intent of the union's position in this case. >> i will let you continue in a

second but what ms. keely talked about the market wasn't necessarily going to driver the considerations that could trump comparable worth. she mentioned the two tier system was also discussed during the process by looking at pay equity and she did not consider that worthy of comparable worth as well, so i want to be sure that this is a framework i am looking at it knowing you're in negotiations with seiu but the framework i want to look at is ensure we're not making decisions that disproportionately fall on women and people of color and reversal of gains from previous moving forward and i am concerned about that and that's what i am paying attention to in this hearing. >> okay. let me go forward and i am hoping to address your point. >> ms. callahan quickly and maybe you're going to address this later and you said in the

wages there were some below and some above. do you have a sense of the numerical values or the classifications and below and how many above? are we going to get into it. >> we only looked at classifications 15% over the market and the market is not the private sector market or even combined public private market that the department of statistics would use. i am looking at the nine bay area counties and the cities of 100,000 or more within those. in some classifications you look at counties and it's a county function such as eligibility borkers. maybe are street functions such as a street worker and sometimes there are not matches but those are the standard universal classifications that we use. >> again when you look at them.

x number were at market. x were above. x were below. >> right. our cut of classifications -- and we did not because we think it would be improper to base any decision on wage setting on the demographics and the classification. we did a straight -- we looked at large -- mostly larger classifications because we were looking to find savings to fund the wage increase seiu was proposed and produce more savings for it and there were 12 job families and not all of which i will note -- in fact i think about -- most -- we looked at those above market; right. and not all of the classifications were the classifications that received pay equity adjustments so it's not correct to say that pay equity is under attack. specifically we're using the criteria in the market that

we're obligated to do under the charter and the union agreed to in negotiations, so that's a challenge that we have. seiu has raised as you know, i have a copy of the contract language. can you put that up? >> sorry just before to finish up. i just want to say that the topic of the hearing i completely agree and want to thank supervisor avalos for calling it and i fully support obviously pay equity and comparable worth. the line of question there is if we're making sure we're at market we want to understand the implications of how that affects our gender or ethic classes of our employees but i want to get a sense of where we are generically as a market and budget committee going forward and if at market or below and

above and i am all for evening it out and bringing people to what they should be paid and if we're over paying people i want to understand that as well. >> i would say that -- steve will correct me if i misstate this. every time we go into negotiations we do surveys. for example the building trades -- not represented by seiu are five to 10% above market and driven by the construction industry. our police are approximately i think they're about 8% over market. the largestir areas in we are over market is seiu. some of that is attributable to comparable worth. absolutely. but it's not our view we are required to exclude all market classification that receive comparable worth. however in the negotiations the union hasn't responded to our proposals -- never counted on the proposals but if comparable

worth were the issue we would look at the classifications that are not subject to comparable worth and we haven't received a response on that either. >> i think comparable worth is the issue and what we want to focus on here. the negotiations are on going, the discussions you're having, but the numbers that -- what 10 to one and that we're moving back on the work that we have done for women and people of color and in the classifications are coming forward and based on market surveys they're lowering the pay according to the classifications that are comparable and i see we're moving away from the standard that we have in place. that's what the numbers suggest and i would like you to focus on in your presentation. >> well, let me speak to two things. first that we just received some information i think last night from seiu. ion

of the documents presented to us in negotiations. we had negotiations yesterday and didn't see these documents so we haven't had the opportunity to analyze them. we looked at one of the charges that purported to show historically relationships of classifications and matched up with comparable worth and we found the target got moved in the course of a 10 year period. we don't know why that is, but for example laundry worker was linked to data entry operator in the 80's but in 95-97 it's linked to operating engineer which is a building trade which is significant apprenticeship period. we don't know why that happen but this tells us this is not necessarily a science. we think if we are -- i would say further