thank you. >> next speaker? >> michael mackinzie, third generation business owner i have kids, they are eat and fixing their own food. >> so i just want to say i am all for a flexible work schedule and i agree completely, and you keep the employees and it is great. but what i have a problem with is that it is being mandated. and it is burden some on the paperwork and we are going to have to keep some type of paperwork on this, we do already for health ordinance and we do for all sorts of things and i am a bit confused as to how this will work with cfra and fmla and family leave act that exists, and if you have employees asking for those leaves, which are extremely urgent in many cases and you have other people on flexible

schedules already, where does that stop? and what are your obligations as an employer? >> i like to mention that 85 percent of the employers in san francisco will be excluded from this if it is ten employees or more and so it will be bringing to 20 employees i don't know where that level is, but if you are a larger employer, where are 70 people? and we have a flexibility work program. i think that you find the larger employers do that and they can and it only makes business sense. excuse me, i was a bit disturbed by the fact that this is the right to ask. this gives the employee the right to ask. i would think that the employee has a right to ask for a flexible schedule. from anybody, whether you are 5, 10, 15, i don't see, and it should be an open door policy, if you don't have those policies, i think that you have larger problems in your

business and this ordinance will not fix any of that. and it all only covers care givers and they may want to pursue a hobby and may want to go back to school. we accommodate all sorts of flexible schedules. it may help someone who is not a care giver a flexible schedule, because someone else that is a care giver who asks for it, to me, it is not fair for those who are not care givers they will obviously take priority in this case. and so i am just a bit confused because it is so rushed. and we really, i know, think that we need to sit down and take a look at more depth as a business community because we have yet to speak to our supervisor about this as well. i would ask that propose for a

flexible work schedule and this is too rushed and needs to be addressed by the business community as well. >> thank you. >> next speaker please? >> elizabeth lafier, keith goldstein and kelley dwight. kathleen cole? >> keith? >> good evening commissioners, i'm the president of the (inaudible) patch merchant's association we have 160 small business members and i am the owner of (inaudible) water proofing and i have about 65 employees and i run the business in the city for 37 years now. and i'm no hard line business owner, and i actually considered myself a progressive. and i find that most issues i stand just slightly to the left of the reverend al sharpton. >> and i will provide the flexible work outs where it is possible. i think that paid sick leave is

a great program. i paid 100 percent of the employer's healthcare from the day that i started my business. and i don't explain about the 40,000 that i pay each year in payroll tax to me that is the cost of the privilege of doing business in the wonderful city. i am like a company and i have been threatened to leave the city if i think that it is a special tax deal. but i will be forced to move my business from this city if this guaranteed scheduling requirement remains in this legislation. i was surprised to hear supervisor chiu say that he ran a business because if you do run a business you would understand that a like mind and like most of the members of the organization you would understand the problems of trying to guarantee a schedule, i am a contractor two weeks ago it rained out of you blue, am i supposed to guarantee that it is not supposed to rain? sni. i got a call from the companies, his truck had broken down and no skaf ford and no

work. >> my friend that runs a catering company she gets a call that there is 50 less attendties should she staff the ivebt at the same level? there are numerous reasons why schedules may change, there is no way that most employers can guard against such unforeseen events. and so it puts us at enormous disadvantage and what the employers that i have heard already is that the members are going to guarantee the minimum number of hours in that two week or the one week look ahead schedule and so we are going to have the disgruntled employees and instead of the loyal and dedicated workforce you are going to have people that are pissed off because we are told that only going to get a work a minimum number of hours and that is going to cause all sorts of decent in a company. >> and the supervisor's point is similar legislation in brit tan and i did used to live there and i do know something about legislation there and this is much tougher.

and there is no scheduling requirement in the legislation, and it is not enerous here. i don't feel that this legislation is geared towards the san francisco family and most san francisco families can't live here, do things like improved affordable housing and transit and schools and this is scoring popularity points about small businesses. thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> >> hi, good evening, commissioners my name is kelley dyer, and i am a contract officer with the city of san francisco and i work an 8-5 schedule and yes, it is dinner time but my 3-year-old here cannot be at homemaking dinner by herself so i need to be with her. currently my child care provider spends more time with my child than i do and that is

difficult sometimes. i support this because i would like the option to be able to ask for the flexibility and be protected in that right to ask for a more flexible schedule. and i would just like to have the flexibility to spend a little pit more time with my kids during the week. and i think that it is a reality to have to work and times have changed in 2010, in san francisco, with at least, it was helpful with at least one child. 81 percent were in the workforce. and i don't think that the work culture has sort of kept up with this. and i think that it has hurt families and children, and you know, i think that for many familis that this will make a world of difference for me, my husband has a job where he has gone two or three days a week, and i don't have family here and it is difficult, being, you know, the sort of single mother

of part time, if you will and just to have that bit of flexibility, and to be protected in that right to ask and to know that it is okay to ask. and it would make a huge difference for me, a difference for me in a lot of san francisco families. so i urge you to support this measure, thanks. >> next speaker? >> following this speaker, jim laserus, karin haidlberg. >> thea selby, sandra chan. >> i am just jumping ahead. >> my name is kathleen cole and i am here to speak in support of the proposal. i am supposed to reveal to you that i have two children at home having dinner without me. i rushed to work and left them at home to fend for themselves.

in part because i feel that in fact this is a really important issue for those of us who raise children here in san francisco. and on the fourth generation in my family to do that. there is an actual problem and it is wonderful to hear about the employers in san francisco who are working hard to accommodate and to provide the flexibility schedules, maybe i am missing something but as i read the legislation, i don't see this as hurting the businesses it puts the floor under the rest to be fair and so that those of you who are great employers are supported in doing so by the city. i am here to speak for you as a gender and san francisco studies at stanford university and i want to affirm that relative to the other developed countries wo do in fact have a huge problem with the family conflict and studis that say that more than 90 percent report the work family conflicts. and we do have a problem also with companies that do roll out

flexible problems that come in early and leave later. but few employees are taking advantage of them. because of the flexibility stig that and the bias in which they are discredited devalued and discriminated against because they ask for rights when they are cotified by the company's policies so the workers that are aware of this do what is called bias avoidance and they don't ask and they forgo the rights that the employers would want to offer them because of a culture, that is what i appreciate about the legislation is this right to ask and the right to open a discussion and dialogue and it so seems to me that there is reasonable employers that are doing that and it gives that right to all workers. so, it is a modest proposal and the rationale is born out by economic studies and i will leave a list of evidence with the clerk i am sorry i did not

make you copies. economic studies with the positive impact on improved mental and physical health, and reduction in absenteism and increase in job satisfaction. and i just want to say that cultural changes that have been a result of these kinds of policis in other countries are not insignificant. i am also want to, and so that public discussion and public debate in the leadership of bodies like yourselves are something really positive and i want to speak as a member of the sandwich generation that took care of their parents that aged and died while i was caring for xhirn and going to school. i relied on flexible employers that allowed me to carry on at task to advance in my career and the lowest income workers with the least amount of flexibility deserve that kind of protection that i had. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next speaker please?

>> jim lazarus, to tell us about the proposed ballot measure i said that it was beyond unbelievable but i do thank you for many hours of supervisor chiu making himself available as we worked through the legislation and as many of the speakers said that the chamber believes that go through the normal process and legally this does not have to go to the ballot. and could be reintroduced as a code amendment and dealt with through the normal process, if it is not possible, we urge this commission to oppose the legislation as drafted. but to urge changes. the business communities that you have heard large and small here tonight, support the right of any employee to request

reasonable flex time and scheduling predictbility at their workplace. but flexion time works both place, it needs to be flexible for the employee, and the employer. what happens with this legislation, is once you start down that path, originally it was going to be an appeal to the officer on the fourth floor of this building or it might go to litigation. or it might go to no required over time, in an emergency. or it might go to i have to pay even though there is no work because the predictable work schedule said that you would be working that is not fair for the employer, it is not fair to the survival of the business. what is fair to everybody is legislation and if there are people, if there is one person, in san francisco, one parent, or one student, who does not feel comfortable asking for a flexible work schedule, passing an ordinance that says that you have the right to a flexible work schedule that you have the

right to appeal back to your employer, to clarify a reason why you might have had a denial. that you have that right and you can't be discriminated against for exercising that right. that should be sufficient to move this subject forward. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> my name is karin hederburg and i am own and operate along with my employees a good life grocery on (inaudible) and vernal heights. i find this legislation really rushed. i am in a quandry on being on the same side of the chamber of commerce jim, and i am usually never agreeing with the chamber. but, this legislation really bothers me.

and it is called the family friendly workplace, legislation and that bothers me to come out against it. and we are a family, friendly workplace because every person that we hire and talk to and work with, and there is a lot of young people and a lot of single mothers, we know their schedule and they have the right to ask, because we are comfortable with our employees. we have 65 employees. and that should not change it by 65 employees or if i have five employees. that relationship needs to be there. they do have the right to ask and they do. i have every weekly news schedule i probably have three schedule requests i want to do this, i got to school change i have got a doctor's appointment and we meet them all but everyone has to be flexible if you get a time off to do something that you have to do you need to help the next person who needs the time off to help them get what they want

to do. so, this legislation just takes and makes an enforcement of something, and i mean the appeal process, the record keeping, i have got 30 schedule requests a week, for 4 years, i am going to keep those in case someone is disgruntled and that is time consuming. and the enforcement and the appeals process. and i mean, i consider myself, a progressive, a very, progressive employer. i know my employees. and i know their needs and it is handled not only in what they do, but how they responding to their jobs. and this legislation puts an onerous responsibility on myself in case there is an appeal in case there is problems. it is a lot of in case this happens. we should encourage the right to ask, but we should encourage

it for a businesses with 65 employees as well as 2 employees. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please? >> hello, commissioners, my name is thea selby and i will be the only progressive here that is for this legislation. yeah, so, i'm a small business owner, i have 7 employees, myself. and i am also a mom, i have got two kids. but i don't think that it is about me, actually. i don't think that it is about any of the people here in the room. because all of the people here in the room have professed as i would as well that we offer flexible schedules and that is not an issue. i think that this is about employees who are afraid to ask for the time off. and particularly it is about single moms who make-up 20 to

25 percent of the workforce and have the least power in our society and the most responsibility. they have the guilt, and i felt this guilt as somebody who has a partner of either harming work, which pays for your child's food, or harming your child's immediate health. this is the choice that they have to make and there is a lot of guilt involved and there is a lot of nervousness and a lot of times people do not ask for that which they need. and that is one major reason that i am for this legislation. and i also understand, i understand why it needs enforcement. in my experience, when you have legislation with no enforcement it has no teeth. and when it has no teeth, it does not happen and again, we are not talking about the people in this room who are all good employers, who all are offering up what they need to to their employees, we are talking about the ones who are

not. so i do think that we need some kind of enforcement and perhaps we can look at other legislation and jurisdictions that it is not acceptable. i did want to add a few things on mr. eagon's excellent analysis. in my experience, temp workers never get six months in a job because they always get taken off to another job. so i am not sure that is going to work. i'm not concerned he mentions that one of the possible ill effects is that this will slow down the hiring of qualified workers, as a said i am a small business owner myself and health insurance costs from employing a worker with a family are the biggest burden on employers, this is not a burden that is anywhere near that burden and so even in my own company, we think long and hard about hiring somebody who has a family. i just want to leave you with just a thought, what is a city without kids? we have 13.8 percent or something like that of our

population 14.4 percent of the population is under 18. we want kids and it is great and it is great to have diversity in the city and i hope that you will consider, some form of this legislation, with enforcement thank you. >> kevin wallace, susan tucker, scott huggy? >> my name is sandra and i am born and raised in san francisco and i hope that other people in the future may be able to say the same thing, i am the daughter of a butcher and a seamstress and they are both em grants and they are not like any of the people that are in this room. i grew up being told that i go to school and my parents worked hard to be here and they never wanted me to be sick, you know? to be helped so i can stay

healthy, but also because they didn't think that they would be able to take care of me. or to pick me up from school or to any of those things that you need to do when circumstances come up with your child. my sisters and i grew up really elthy, but every year, someone would come to school and be sick, i don't know why because sher parents told them not to be sick and they got sick and they were pushed to go to school. and infect the rest of us. >> and so, my parents, my mom was a seamstress and she could not take off the work to take

care of us. but, eventually it came to a point where she had to take care of me and my sisters and my family over all in the house, so much more than work that she had to leave her job, she didn't have that flexibility. and so, for a couple of years, my mom had to leave work and become a homemaker and we were left as a single salary home. so, i support this legislation because it gives the employee an opportunity to request, you know, flexibility schedules and so that their jobs can work with their families. we should not have to ask the employees to work exclusively at the expense of families tu, very much. >> susan tucker and my company

is one stop graphics and i have been in business for 25 years and also on the business of the chamber and a member of the small business advocates. this is, of course, very field-good, legislation. how can you be oppose thed to something that is family-friendly? it is kind of like, the toy band, in the happy meals, it is as the supervisor said, it is kind of a nudge, it is trying to nudge maybe, employers and employees. but, i am wondering why do we need a charter amendment for a nudge? >> i note that many of the speakers that have spoken in favor of this legislation are talking about their parents. that is another generation. i believe that the workforce has evolved. i also understand that there may be one thing that this legislation does not address,

is there will be employees, whether english is a second language, whether they are shy, there will be people who may have a flexible schedule and who don't ask, this legislation does not address it. it is a very progressive and fine thought. but, it is prime, in the actual legislation, winds up being quite a bit more than that. and so, i would respectfully submit that we recognize that a nudge in the right direction is something that could be part of an education where we urge people, feel, comfortable asking for flexible work schedules, all of these employers, we offer the flexible work schedules, but this field a little bit like a solution in search of a problem, and i don't see why we need to rush a charter amendment to address something that i don't know that we have

established as a problem in san francisco. >> thank you, the next speaker please. >> scott harpy and i own an insurance agency. and i have been advocating for small business for about 30 years now. and i have not heard very frequently the out rage that this legislation has brought. now in all fairness they don't know the amendments and applause for the amendments and i think that you need to go further but they don't know those and they just saw the initial proposals that were put out there and they thought that it was rushed and they thought that they were doing it and those small businesses are doing it and they also see being put in a position of small business being anti-family. so, what we have heard tonight from both sides is we don't

have problems with the right of the employee to ask. and i don't think that we have problems with the right of the office of labor standards to review whether there was retaliation, and i don't think that there is a problem about following the paperwork. so on that particular piece of it, i think that we have, anonymity between both sides. it is just that this legislation goes beyond that. and that is where the problems come. so, i would like to see this not go on the ballot but i would like to see the amendments and a number of them, but the one that i would like to pick up on a couple of them, commissioner dooley mentioned, the family definition of family, i think that is critical that that be addressed. but also, as a provision, i have not heard anybody talk about it, but there is a provision, that says, to change to amend the proposal, it can be amended only adding more

requirements on employers by a majority vote. and it is not a two-sided street but it can be amended either way, i think that needs to be consistent on the legislation. but i think that the message that i leave with you is we want to work with the employees. i think that most small businesses do, and most businesses do. and we are concerned about this being rushed, we are concerned about going through a ballot and we are concerned about being put in a position that we are anti-family. and so, i would urge you to oppose the legislation, unless amended with the items that have been mentioned tonight. >> thank you. next speaker please? >> i have kevin wal ace and elizabeth lefera as the final speaker cards, excuse me, bob black and art swanson, if there is anybody else you can line up on the side wall if not those

speakers can go up in any order. >> good evening, my name is rob black and i am the executive director for the golden gate restaurant association, and we represent over 1,000 member locations of restaurants throughout the bay area. most of which are small businesses, like yours. the concern that has been many concerns expressed tonight about the legislation and the impact that it will have on the small businesses and the ability to do business. and i do think that a lot of that came out of the initial draft. and the supervisor has made some strong moves as far as really trying to address the comments back from the business community. but i think that there are some existing concerns that are still outstanding, that we would love to see addressed.

and as scott said, i don't think that there is anyone who opposes on any side, the right of an employee to ask for a flexible schedule and a predictable schedule and there is agreement axros the board for that. but there is a couple of areas where i will be very specific that we have the big concerns about that goes beyond that. and one, is in section 12 z 5 g. where it provides if you have provided an employees with a predictable schedule, you have to give them reasonable notice, which is undefined, in order to change that, or to reduce those or to change that schedule or reduce those hours. so for example, it was a comment about a painter who will be coming into work but it rains that day. how do you give that person reasonable notice, and then you are stuck paying for that day. under the existing language in

the ordinance now, similar in the restaurant industry, you very far ten people in your houseworking table and it rains outside and nobody goes out to eat you need to let the people go but you can't because they have a predictable schedule and you are not allowed to reduce those hours without giving advanced notice, so that is a certain that we have. similar 12 z 7 b 9. provides to turn down work without 7 days notice, if they have a schedule and turned down and appeal to the employer and turned down again, but then they still don't have to come to work if requested in that sefb day period. so that creates obviously a significant burden on employers. the other areas where we have concerns about are in regards to how it is amended which was addressed earlier and the definition of who is effects. a