this man is more dedicated to his employees than anybody. and for him to say what he did tonight, almost made me cry. it was terrible. mr. eagan when he was up here and if you can remember and you will play it back in the beginning what he said was, he said, when employers voluntary do something, people seem to get along better. the operative word there was volunteer. not be asked to by the government to run their business the way that the government thinks that they should run their business. i am sorry for those of you who think that two employees and employees and keeping notes for years does not cost you monday y i don't know what business you run but time is money. it will cost money. respectfully for the gentleman, very articulate man who came up here and started telling you that this is going to get the

boos and i perceive him is from being the entitled generation when he says that we expect it from the employer. again, i run a business. and we work together with the employees. very happy. and what you heard most tonight, was, if we can just work together, if we can just have a flexible schedule and request a flexible schedule that is all that is needed here, not all of the other manutia, thank you for your time. >> any other members of the public who would like to make a comment this evening? >> come on up. >> i am jay lantus and i am speaking for myself here although i am a member of the small business network. the offense that i take to the entire discussion that we have had is that it is

discriminatory, and it is the proper function of the government to insure the rights of employees. and it is not the proper function of the government to determine one group of employees over another would have a special benefit and that is my deep concern about the remarks that i have heard from everyone here. and so thank you for letting me share that. >> thank you. >> any other members of the public that would like to make a comment on this item? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. >> commissioners? >> >> i will start the ball rolling. >> commissioner o'brien? >> i got to tell the story that the lady from vernal heights made the comment being in the same campus of lazarus when i came to san francisco and listened to npr radio and i think that it is (inaudible) was on there and he was just talking to two people who were

as opposite as polarities can be and he said, well, you know, i guess that we could take it from here that politics really does make strange bed fellows and you just reminded me of that story when i was hearing that on the radio. my initial reaction is one of a lot of concern about it. and i guess that i am old school to be honest. and it is a network towards or tied in with what i had growing up. and i was raised by two parents, you know, father and mother that, you know, my mom was a stay at home qualified nurse, and that that we have come a long way with the women in the workplace but also has

to be recognized that we paid a price for that liberty to be given to women, liberty is not the right word, but for that advancement in civilization, we paid a price. i think, personally, in terms of the nurturing that the children get, from somebody that may be a dedicated mom as compared to a mom who has a commitment to work as well. i am a great believer in the business's ability to recognize competitive advantages. and i will always defer to business, to be vastly superior regulators and to make themselves competitive and if it is blah tantly obvious that by being flexible they are going to get an edge, it will happen, they don't need to hear it from us as city

representatives or regulators it is going to happen. i am real concern about that term, the nudge effect. and that nudged effect, that i here, the college hammer when i hear the nudge. and i see the sledge shamer i really do, and i see the government getting involved in people's day-to-day businesses. but it was interesting that we met about the young lad that made the research and i do think that we will head towards a more flexibility workplace and it is going to happen whether this legislation passes or not in my opinion because it is the way that the world has turned, our world is different today than it was in our parents's generation. and that demand is going to come from the young people coming into the workplace and you know what? they are going to dictate it in the future. and you see a demand in shift of the economy in san francisco, and a lot of the

high-tech people want to be in san francisco and they are dictating the terms to the employers and so those things will happen any way. so i applaud the reason behind it, and i also think that as an employer myself, that most of us are going to do the right thing. somebody comes and has a fair reason, whether it is a dying parent or a sick child, i have faith in human beings and employers there is going to be some bad apple and guess what this legislation will not change that, you will have a bad apple and they will break the law and learn the law and find out what they can have to do by the law. i just don't think that you george ... going to change that. i have a lot of concerns about the legislation as it right now

for the reasons that i out lineds and there may be a bit of a rush on this and that is kind of scaring me a little bit too. that is my first reaction to the hearing tonight. >> commissioner dwight? >> so, i share many of the same concerns as the business owners have spoken and my fellow commissioners and i am a business owner and i employ 22 employees. 12 of them are working mothers, steam stresses. and we have a very flexible environment. and we allow for maternity leave, and extended leave, and we allow for our employees to go and visit their relatives in china every year. we allow for them to take care of sick children. we allow for them to take care of sick relatives we allow for them to take care of getting their car fixed because that effects their ability to move their children around and for their husbands to car pooling to work as normally happens at

our place if they are not taking public transportation. and so, this is just about humanity and this is not being family friendly it is about being human. dealing with people's every-day, lives. whether they are single, which half of my employees are, or whether they are working mothers or the other half of my employees are. so, i take it issue with the notion of celebrating, something that i believe san francisco already takes a leadership position in, being family friendly, but more importantly being human-friendly. and especially in our proximity to the silicon valley which is widely regarded as the pioneer in flexible schedules. in the valley and technology businesses led the way for casual friday and ultimately casual every days. >> and there are not many places outside of the bay area that allow you to bring your

dog to work. that allow you to determine when you want to come to work, that feed you from a cafeteria where you have hired a professional well, known, chef. that run shuttles up and down the peninula so that you can live in the city and work in san jose or vice sa versa, i don't think that this is the key of making san francisco any more family friendly. these are issues of affordable housing, and our lack of confidence in the public school system. and our inability to get our kids into a system that we might feel more comfortable which is highly competitive and very expensive called the private system. these are issues, that far beyond as one of the speakers said by searching doing a google search to one of our other local employers who probably the teragon of family friendly, wore environment, google. so, i just have a fundamental

problem with passing laws and creating government mandates to do things, celebrate, if you will, things that we already do. if this is a national issue, as it has been addressed by nations, the uk, new zealand and some of the others that you have mentioned tonight, let the national government take it on. we don't need a law, in our 49 square miles, to make life even more difficult for employers. and every law to get an industry to deal with that law. and every law begets by definition, litigation, and litigation, involves lawyers. and there are fewer higher paid employees in this society that we live in than lawyers and i tell you, record-keeping, legal, implication and all of these things are, they are not hidden expenses these are real expenses and i did not hear a lot of that talked about

tonight. and so, i am very skeptical that we have a problem, i am very skeptical that there are no far greater expenses that we have heard about tonight for the small businesses and i am a physical conservative and a legal conservative. and there is a reason why the tax code is bloated and a reason why the books are bloated because we are passing things for laws that don't need laws. >> and i think that, i think that we should be careful. as a group, we are all here in charge of seeing how we get through legislation in a responsible way, and i don't think that throwing it on to the ballot, in a rushed way is the right way to do it. if there is legislation to s passed here, if we feel that absolute need to cotify a right which seems to already be a universal privilege in this city, then, we should go through a proper legislative process, one that is considered one that allows everyone to weigh in and one that does not

result in frankly a flurry of frantic effort to fix a bun of of things that never would have to have been fixed if we came to the table and said that i have an idea and let's talk about it. rather than here it is. what do ultimate think? >> and i think that we found out, really quickly what we thought. a big group of people thought. clarification of the legislation to makes it pallet able from the people that you heard from tonight as a hope of being supported by a big con stit entcy that is the businesses of san francisco. that considers the modifications or considers the process by which is going to be passed as it is going to get passed and i think that is a

considered legislative process and not one that forces it on the ballot and considers all of the modifications that are proposed tonight. >> thank you. >> commissioner ortiz? >> i believe in the free market and the businesss that don't care for the employees don't stay in business that long and i think that and i believe and i am encouraged that no one should fear retaliation and i think that the small businesses community have spoken and said that they don't agree with that either and there should be no realation and we should focus on that not burden another administrative thing to the ready tetering basket that small businesses carry and it

is one more thing to that basket for mall businesss in san francisco. and eventually, you know, we are just going to break the camel's back and i understand the spirit of the legislation, but my mom taught me to treat people with respect. and i don't need a law to continue to do so. >> supervisor chiu's proposed ballot measure has a great idea, i think that we need to narrow this down and go back to the drawing board in terms of what we heard tonight, and if we can do that, in a timely enough manner with supervisor chiu, that we could put something on the ballot that would be acceptable to the majority of businesses then that is great and i agree that perhaps we need to spend a little more time, either have the ballot measure in june or

do it through legislation. >> thank you. >> i am going to give my comments here. >> i would like to thank everybody who showed up tonight and gave your comments on both sides. supervisor chiu, you have always been there for us for small business. and on this one, though, i have to agree with my colleagues i do feel that it was rushed and i still am not coming to grips as to why we can't do this legislatively, i don't understand why we need to do it to the ballot. and i know that they do it in these other country, if that is the case let the federal government deal with it. i do believe that most companies including my own and everybody in this room, we all do it. and this is something not right about this at the moment for

myself. so we need to step back and i think that if it was what several people said tonight and if was just as simple as an employee asking, and an employer, you know, for flex time that is it. we don't need to have this, you know, scheduling a week out, two weeks out and all that have other stuff. i do appreciate you talking with the chamber and other small business groups on these amendments but to me i don't think that is enough and i think that we need to just step back and relook at this and come up with another solution, so, you know, it is palatable to everyone. >> commissioner rilely? >> i have a question for supervisor chiu? >> after hearing all of the comments and all of the speakers, would you consider changing the process to go

through the legislative process instead of putting it on the ballot? >> i will think about it as i answered to commissioner dwight, i think that it is important to have a public discussion about this for the reasons that we are talking about it. and i have a lot of several thoughts that i would like to respond to some aspects of this. first i want to take a moment and thank not only the commission for your consideration, but the members of the public. and on both sides of this issue, i know that a lot of people have strongly held views and i appreciate the views even though we may not always agree on these things and i want to appreciate the comments from the business comment in support of the very simple idea that an employee should have the right to ask. and why many of us think and hope that in all of our businesses that is the case, that is not the case, it is not the case in san francisco, and every place of employment, not the place throughout california and not the place in our country. and i have also heard the idea that we should do this nationally and i will say part of the reason that i am here is

that this very proposal has been proposed in four congress and not passed. so advocates have us to come up and step up because in san francisco we have thought differently and we have progressive employees that know that this is important. let me also to say to commissioner yee riley comments, i am willing to consider amendments and i would love to hear the thoughts about what they may be and let me throw out the thoughts. i understand that while predictbility and scheduling is a real issue with employees in the city and around the country, i appreciate that the provisions that we put in may not do it exactly as clearly as we would like and so i would love the feedback on that. the definition of the family, i think that commissioner dooley raise thiseds and others and needs to be tightened up. the city economist has raised a

number of issues that we are happy to look at. the threshold for the size of the business that this ought to apply to. if that is something that is important to this commission i am willing for that. >> i would like to address a couple of things from the audience, the painter case or the restaurant, who all of a sudden does not have enough people coming some night and the concern that if there is a predictable schedule that was committed to that would create liability for an employer, we put in the language to address this when unmet with the advocates in the network this issue was raidsed our legislation says that for employer who is granted a predictable arrangement if they have insufficient work for the employee and provides reasonable notice to the employees nothing in this ordinance requires them to compensate the employee during such a period of insufficient work. and we put that around reasonable notice, we know for

different reasons it means different things, in the law you use the adjective for a particular industry how do we make it fit. for the restaurant industry it is this number hours or for the painting industry it is that many hours but we put in that phrase because we think that people understand what reasonable might mean. but again, i appreciate that there are issues or questions around that and so i am open to thinking about that. there is an issue that we are discriminating in favor of one class of folks, say the parents with kids and let me just suggest that the way that the legislation is currently drafted i think that everyone in this room that some day if you don't have kids that you need to take care of. you will have somebody that lives in your family a spouse, a partner, a brother and a sister and a father and a grandfather, who you need to take care of. and so this legislation now is drafted in such a way to allow anyone in that situation because i think that everyone will be a care taker or giver

some day and we wanted to make it flexible for that. >> now, let me just also make a couple of broader points. i have to say that some of you know that this has been a bit of a painful conversation as president adams pointed out i have been for the past ten years in san franciscan advocate for the small business community and i think that at our board of supervisors i have passed more legislation for the small business community than anyone on the board. to eliminate dozens of fees and stream line invoicing and to insure that we are providing contract to local businesses and ada lawsuits, and last year we all worked for aner tire year to pass the business tax reform so that our business tax break will not apply to certain companies that come to the tech community but all of the companies in particular from the small business community. i also want to address the fact that someone who ran a small busy ran a business fof nine years. we had 30 and 40 employees during the course of those five years, we made a decision in

the first couple of years because we had the young employees who were starting to have kids and starting to ask us could i work at home? could i work at night as posed to in the morning. and we face aid tough choice, but decided that we wanted to provide more flexible working arrangements for our employees and this led to incredible dividends for our company. we had many of the parent employees never left our company and stayed with us for the entire tenure that i was with the company because we knew that they were working hard, when they were not at the job, they figured out a way with the flexible work arrangement to be productive and that was something that we saw worked within our company. now, i also hear that a lot of folks say, hey, if you want to do things for families, there are other things that you can do, and i acknowledge that, but the board of supervisors we don't have any jurisdiction over the schools but i have

worked to insure that the city is developing a record number of housing than we have seen in years, last year we passed a major trust fund to develop more housing a top concern for families. i have been working hard to how to make the transit system better, for families. this i am not going to claim this an idea that will turn everything around but this has to be part of the equation, how we as a city can create a workplace that is bet foreall of the working family and how we define the families is important. and then the last thing that i want to say is a suggestion that this is going to continue to drive the businesses out of the city. and iment to say, that we have heard this when it came to other policies that the city has passed. this policy unlike sick leave or healthcare or minimum wage, does not cost businesses any hard dollars. but, even though we have all of those other policis in place if

you put this next to those it is very modest. even with those other policis in place, right now in san francisco we have a booming economy, we are the envy as at city. and not only to the rest of the state but to the rest of the country with the policies in place and so i will submit that the opportunity for us to say as a city that we want to allow for flexible working arrangements for families and it is a modest idea and i think that if we stand up and do this, i actually believe as i said that hopefully in the near future, that this will be the case throughout the country and i think that we need a nudge to be able to do that and i hope that we can start that? san francisco and let me just close by saying, that i certainly understand the sentiment of this commission but i would like to have some more direct feedback if you want in the coming days and what specifically you think should be addressed and i will take that into account and consider it seriously.

>> commissioner dwight. >> that i think we all appreciate the spirit of your proposal. i don't know that anyone here as questioned the spirit or questioned the economic and human tar an incentives for accommodating employees not only in flexible work schedules but in the myriad of other benefits that frankly have been pioneered in this area. whether it be flexible schedules or bring your dog to work or having gourmet food to work or whatever it might be. there are benefits and they vary by company as competitive tools to try to attract the young employees and families and employees as old as i am. but, i find it difficult to get my head around passing a law to validate something that we already do.

because i think that laws beget all sorts of unintended consequences i think that it sets a precedent for just creating more laws, laws upon laws, and laws, in our society have a down side, as well as an upside. and we are in a extraordinary letigus society and this will come with a certain cost and i don't think that you can't say that it will come with a cost but to say that it is going to make san francisco more attractive is a read herring, we are an attractive place to be and we are moving it every day and our economy improves daily and people want to come here and companies want to locate here and the employees are demanding that they want to be in the city now and not in the suburbs at least some of the young ones and i think that the flights of the suburbs is a natural flight and sometimes, it is a temporary one for raising children and people want to have a yard where they can have the kids who want to

run around and have a fence and want to live in the apartments and that is typically not a characteristic of housing in the city. it is just not. it is vertical and not horizontal and i think that some of those things just are natural. it is not about whether we are friendly or hostile. it is about we are different. and we are different at different phases of life. and so, i just don't feel that passing a law to assert something that we are already well known for is really necessary. i think that is much of the opposition. again, i don't think that anyone here has argued with the sentiment and with the spirit of the proposal. so, that is kind of about it. i mean, everyone seems to are unanimous and one thing that is troubling is the speed at which it progressed and it has been

progressed and sort of the process from here on out and the idea that it will get forced on the ballot regardless. and that there is just going to happen and i think that we feel that we are being the small businesses, the businesses in general are being characterized as somehow not family-friendly by the mere marketing, of this proposal. and that, i think, is offensive to many of us. because we are very family friendly, we are just people friendly. that is san francisco, that is our heritage and many different dimensions not just business. so here we are. tonight, with a sort of litany of proposed changes that we hope that you will consider and kind of an impass as not knowing how to proceed from here. and whether some of these suggestions will be implemented, and whether the process is going to become a

little more or a little less kie on chaotic and a little more tempered and so i am at a loss as to what kind of a motion to make. >> commissioner o'brien? >> i am reminded of probably two years ago, supervisor campos came before us with proposal and legislation and forgive me for not remembering the exact specifics but there is a lot, commonality with that and it was unanimously rejected by the commission from both sides, people progressive and people that are conservative or moderate. and it was about implementing for the small few employers that did not implement some program and the question was asked that how many of the bad people are you trying to tackling here and you can see that most of the people are

good and it is not going to impact anybody because most of the people are good and so it kind of regards to the logic and it is just a few bad apples and you can't legislate to deal with a few bad apples and president chiu, this is kind of reminding me of that discussion, the way that i see it, going down, frankly, and discuss in the terms of which way the legislation is going to go. and i am not crazy, about the idea of give me some amendments, feed me the amendments about because i think that there is some fundamental issues with the idea in the first place, i mean that there are questions about the requirement of it. is it something that is needed? how many bad people do we have? i mean, it sounds like you have conversed with some people that