so some of them simply lack knowledge. some of them have made a calculated financial decision that it is worth it in the short term to steal wages from workers versus the chances of getting caught and paying those back wages in the future. some business owners lack the skills and resources to comply. they are trying their best to comply, but they don't have the staff or human resources department, or they don't have an outside payroll company, whatever the reason. and then there are those industries where they simply are a culture of noncompliance, where it is very difficult to find a responsible employer. for example, we talked a lot about the care home industry where residential care homes are pretty much across the board operated in violation of workers rights and it is very difficult in that industry to find a responsible -- although there are some. it's difficult to find a responsible business owner. so, for one or many -- >> supervisor mar had a question. >> yes, since we just dealt

with the university home, could you give us some examples of wage theft in the nursing home industry? >> yeah, i deal a lot with the care home industry which is a smaller facility. they're usually a six-bed facility. it is either elderly individuals or folks with developmental disabilities that receive funding through private or through the state. the common practice in those care homes, small residential care homes is to hire one or two individuals to take care of the residents in the facility and pay them a certain flat rate. so, you'll hear testimony actually in the public comment section from a woman who worked in one of these facilities who came forward and complained about the conditionses and a collaboration that largely came out of the task force, with we were able to collect wages through attorney and [speaker not understood] being involved in the community center. these individuals work up to

17, 18, 24 hours a day sometimes, for a flat rate of $60 a day. and $60 does not compensate somebody for minimum wage and over time for working 24 hours. they often are provided with housing, you know, a facility like that may have a bed for them to sleep in. employers are allowed to take a credit for that facility, the bed. but only with a written agreement and those written agreements pretty much across the board don't exist. >> i'll just add that i found -- i was so touched by the last item on the agenda and the testimony and it really rang home for us because of the work we've done around trying to enforce labor laws with residential care home. and, you know, we see a

business model that's not working. >> thank you, supervisor mar. so, we'd like to highlight a couple of key recommendation from the report and there are pages in the report, we'll summarize them. the number one recommendation from the task force was to increase [speaker not understood] available to olrc. the task force specifically recommending four new positions within the office of labor standards enforcement and also to research and implement a new case management system for olrc to more efficiently track cases that they are investigating and recovering wages for workers. in addition, what the task believes, the coordination between agency which was born in the task force and the conversations which starts in a relationship developed through the task force were incredibly

valuable and that establishing some variety of permanent working group, a task force supporting that ongoing collaboration amongst city departments, perhaps including agency that were not sitting on the task force but do have a part to play, the ongoing collaboration among the city departments is of utmost importance. we also recommended that if it's not already inherent and in permits and business licenses and in other city regulations, that the board of supervisors should act to authorize city departments to suspend or revoke permit business he that violate wage theft laws. and finally, information showing this is one of the big challenges we discovered, but that some ways for agencies in the city to coordinate data around business data through the interactions of businesses uniformly to violators can be tracked.

we have had specific recommendations directed at the agencies that sat on the task force, and most of these recommendations were amazingly generated by the agencies themselves about ways that they could more efficiently participate in the fight against wage theft. their recommendation was that the city attorney increase the number of cases they bring, they do bring caseseses but we'd love to see more. but the district attorney bring more criminal prosecutions. they have brought some that have been very high profile that assisted in raising the awareness and consequences of violating your workers' rights, but the district attorney could do more. we wanted to make sure that wage theft violators are not benefiting from any city recognitions or tax incentives. so in some way to screen businesses and there have been more recent ordinanceses passed, but to make it meaningful across the board. so, more business that has violated a workers' right and

outstanding judgments and workers wages will be benefiting from their relationship with the city. and finally, to identify ways that departments interact with worker and with employers to educate, just to continually educate workers and employers about workforce rights and responsibilities. >> i'm going to summarize some of the steps that have been taken since the issuance of the final report which was now six months ago. as was mentioned and as you know, there was a budget add back a couple of weeks ago to add $170,000 to fiscal year 14-15 and 15-16 for increased staffing at the olrc. that will allow us to hire one new compliance officer. unfortunately there is not enough money in that second

year for us to budget a second position, but it will be in temp salaries and hopefully we will -- it's my plan to be able to use it. the minimum wage ballot initiative that the language will be finalized in the coming weeks includes language, the last i saw it, that would strengthen city departments' ability to revoke permits and licenses of wage theft violators. and since the time of the wage theft task force started, the collaborative has -- the community-based organization -- the number of community-based organizations that we partner with has increased. it's now, as i mention, six partner organizations. our office is developing specs for a new case management

system whether we have funding for it or not. we are collaborating with the department of labor, the da, and the da's office on a case and this is the first such collaboration that we've done. we're collaborating with community-based organizations and the state bureau of field enforcement on what will be the largest minimum wage case that olrc has handled. we've reached out to the treasurer and tax collector's office -- >> i apologize. i think we're going to lose a quorum pretty soon. i was wondering if you can -- >> sure. in conclusion -- >> thank you. [laughter] >> let me show you some graphics that the state labor commissioner's office has issued with their campaign that wage theft is a crime.

and finally, i want to thank again everyone who participated in the wage theft task force and spent many months of hard thinking to collaborate together to figure out how to move this work forward. i look forward to working with all of the participants and the city agencies to i am ~ implement the recommendations. >> thank you very much. yes, supervisor yee. >> excuse me. >> sorry, supervisor yee. >> i just have a quick question. you mentioned earlier in your presentation that some of the employers may not be aware of the laws or regulations and i don't know if it's a big percentage or not, just a few people. then i'm looking at your recommendations that have been implemented.

the outreach contracts that you've given, the six, i guess six one, what is the focus on there? is it outreaching to employees or employers? because if there is an issue with employers, it seems like you would want to do some outreach for them. >> point well taken. i spoke about the community-based organizations who do outreach and education to workers and who encourage workers -- work with worker to help prepare claims before government agencies. we also work with the office of small business and the treasurer and tax collector's office to disseminate information on the front end as businesses are applying to do business in san francisco. those agencies are providing information about san francisco labor laws and i see that the office of small business is here today and perhaps she'll

talk to you more about that. we do partner with though agencies for those purposes. we have -- we do an annual mailing with notices to every registered business. we are featured in the new business portal that's being developed by the office of small business. and we're certainly open to any other suggestions about how to do that in our community. >> well, i assume that whatever you send out to the businesses would be done bilingually or tri lingually? >> six languages. >> supervisor mar. >> why you yes, i just wanted to thank you for the presentation and the task force for the hard work over the year. at some point i'd like information about the culture of compliance and what industries comply and what the barriers to break that noncompliance culture. and also i know the

multi-lingual capabilities of the six community based organizations and that is our model being a key part of what we do to prevent wage theft. but i'm just wondering if you could talk about the demographics of workers that face the most prevalent wage theft and how -- we have language abilities and cultural competence in organizations whether it's in olrc, osic, and within community-based organizations. >> so, we find that most wage theft victims who are mono lingual in languages other than english are spanish speakers or cantonese speakers. both the olrc and the community-based organizations have numerous compliance officers or workers who are

bilingual and cantonese, spanish, and mandarin. what else was your question? >> i know we're expanding the capability of tagalog and other filipino dialects. >> right. >> so, within the city it looks like language equality and language access is helping, but within the olrc and then work with community-based organizations, sounds like we have language capabilities to address the disproportionate number of immigrants and their language abilities. so, it seems like we're well prepared on the language front. >> i feel good about that with our agency. we have compliance -- two compliance officers who are bilingual in tagalog. we have one -- several with cantonese, four, i think, who are bilingual in spanish, two -- one with mandarin, one with thai. and that said, we also use

language line which we have been able to do effectively. most recently with nepalese workers. it was an interesting situation where the employer brought an interpreter in with nepalese workers. we asked the interpreter to leave. we use language line. the workers were reportedly brought in to tell us they wanted to withdraw their claim. when we spoke with them without the designated interpreter in the room with language line, that was not the case at all. >> thank you. >> great, thank you. >> i would just like to add to that, olrc has incredible language capacities. the cultural competency and the support the worker that the community based worker can provide is incredibly important in helping workers to get that first step in coming forward. it's incredible once they have come forward that there are people they can talk to in their native language at olrc.

>> thank you. like to call on the district attorney's office and i don't know if -- yes. ms. wagoner. i would simply ask folks to keep their comments as brief as possible. i know that i have to tend to a personal matter so we don't want to lose a quorum. >> thank you so much. and first on behalf of district attorney george gascone, i'd like to thank the board of supervisors, specifically you, supervisor mar and supervisor campos, for shining a light on this very serious issue. and on behalf of the district attorney's office and mr. gascone, we would like to let you know that we intend on using all the t-a-o-zv in ~ tools in our tool box to combat wage theft and also the safety of workers and osha violations and of course the most extreme example being human trafficking and those types of things. we have multiple criminal

prosecutions that we have done over the last few years, including ongoing criminal prosecutions and, of course, that's the most serious tool in our tool box that we will intend on using and have used in the past. in addition, the district attorney's office has authority and jurisdiction to file civil suits under 17 200 in addition to the city attorney's office, also has that concurrent jurisdiction. and we are working collaboratively with many organizations, including olrc and the nongovernmental organizations and the state contractors licensing board and osha and other organizations as much as possible to collaboratively address the issues of workers' rights, their safety, their entitlement to payment and we are creating a multi-lingual wage theft hotline that we intend to reach out to the public with through

our da newsletter and we will have many languages as they can report wage theft and other workers rights issues directly to the district attorney's office. we do already have the da newsletter set up. and we also have a lot of other languages that are -- that we have -- we do language surveys at our office to identify many languages that we can use to contact or speak to people that call in. and, of course, one of the main issues -- main roles of our office is to ensure that the victims of wage theft get restitution for their losses. so, we look forward to working collaboratively with the city attorney's office, with olrc, and we hope to work together in the future in an ongoing collaboration on a wage theft task force group so that we can work together on various offender that we identify and work on the best tools on how to go forward and make sure that they get in compliance and that the worker are protected.

and thank you so much again for shining a light on this. >> thank you very much, ms. wagoner. if we can hear from karen yu of the department of public health. >> supervisors, i'm senior environmental health with the environmental section of the health department and also a member of the wage theft task force. so, in the report prepared by the task force, there are several recommendations revolving around how city departments can have a bigger role in deterring wage they arethv. and today i would like to provide two examples of how the health department can -- has illustrated how city departments can become more involved. since 2010, the environmental health branch of the health department was approached by olrc to consider suspending and revoking health departments to establishments whose owners have failed to comply with olrc requirements. and since then we have been

using a general clause in the california retail food code and the health code department with olrc, the workers and the community-based organizations in recouping wages for workers. for example, this is how it usually goes. when either olrc or the [speaker not understood] department of labor standard enforcement requires [speaker not understood] pay back wage, the owner is still recalcitrant in complying, olrc will file a complaint with the health department and the health department would hold a hearing with the director of public health to consider permit suspension or revocation. although this does not prevent wage theft, this model of keeping the owners accountable for complying with applicable business laws has been really helpful to olrc's efforts. it's very helpful to worker to recoup some of the wages more quickly. and i'm sure it helps promote

good business practices. so, in order to -- >> can i just ask you, so, withholding of permits by the department of public health, i'm going to guess that that's for restaurants largely or what are the types of businesses and how often is that used? >> okay. so, we have definitely worked on restaurants com politectiontionv with olrc as well as one establishment, we also worked with a massage parlor. ~ complaints through the last couple years we worked on two or three cases together. >> thank you. >> okay. and -- but in order to continue to do this and to strengthen the health department's authority as far as other city departments, we really urge the board to consider an ordinance that specifically authorize city departments to suspend and revoke permits to violators. and that's recommendation a4 in your report. and the second role that the

health department has played in the deterring wage theft is in educating our clients. as you know, dph serves a population that is very susceptible to wage theft. so, while doing healthy homes, while we're doing healthy homes visits to wic recipients, we speak with families about wage theft and their labor rights. and then for the owners we conduct -- require food safety training for establishment owners, food establishment owners. and recruited in that training we have materials about minimum wage ordinance, occupational health and safety. and, so, like dph, many other city departments also have clients who are susceptible to wage theft. so, we urge the board to consider, you know, pushing forth recommendation a5 in order to -- so that the city departments can include education of wage issues and labor rights into the regular

educational efforts. >> thank you, ms. yu. thank you so much. i see we have regina [speaker not understood] the director of our office of small business. i was wondering if supervisor campos and his staff had asked if you wanted to make some remarks. >> thank you, supervisor mar. they had not, but i would like the opportunity to do so. and i, too, want to say that it was an honor for the office of small business and myself to be a member of the task force and extend my appreciation to supervisor campos and you for convening the task force. and to say that for our office, you know, the task force, i think we were all in very much agreement with the recommendations and our office is in agreement with the recommendations and really want to encourage the board of supervisors to fully adopt them. and that we are also very fully committed where we have engaged

with businesses. it is our role and responsibility so make sure that they know what all their regulatory requirements are, which includes dealing with individuals' wages and the san francisco specific employment laws. ~ to make sure so, we take that very seriously and continue to do that daily with our customer service in terms of informing clients. the materials that olrc has on the labor laws had been a tremendous tool for us because so often we're having conversation with individuals and they're receiving a vast amount of information in terms of what they're required to do. so, to be able to hand them a pamphlet that states all their obligations is a really valuable tool for us to ensure that they have that to walk away with to remember that when

they start employing individuals, they have these additional obligations. i think we are also interested in looking at additional ways of which we can identify and communicate with businesses that start out as sole proprietors and maybe in a year or two then start employing individuals. and, so, to remind them of their additional san francisco employment requirements. so, i think that there is some additional opportunities, then, that we have, but again, really want to sort of reiterate with the department of public health ways that the departments can strengthen our interaction and utilize those tools to sort of leverage businesses being responsible. we support that. >> thank you very much, [speaker not understood]. now we have from the city attorney's office stephanie [speaker not understood]. thank you for being here and participating as well in the

task force. >> thank you. good afternoon. i just wanted to touch on briefly some of the work that the office of the city attorney has done with the olrc. i've been working with the olrc for seven years now. ghosh, i can't believe that. and our office has resolved -- what we do is work with them on the cases that they aren't able to resolve informally. so, a lot of their cases they are able to resolve would you tell us, but once a lawyer gets involved or if it gets a little bit more complicated then they will call us. so, since 2004 we've resolved about 131 cases. i counted roughly this morning about $6 million we've brought in in back wages in penalties and whatnot. so, about 3-1/2 million in the last -- since 2012. so, a couple of cases involving

home health care recently, [speaker not understood] and sunset garden which is one of the cases that we partnered with the employment law center and the wage justice center. ~ recently. one thing i wanted to note, though, most of these cases do settle outside of court. 99% of them. that's something i think is important to note, but that they do need our assistance. and what we do is we work with the employers and we educate them. so, when we're settling them, we teach them about the law. we get them into compliance and hopefully we don't see them again. so, that's what they use us for. they use us to mediate and to settle them, to teach them, and then if they need to go to hearings. we have gone to hearings. we've been in this courthouse hearing, every time we've gone to hearing we've won. they're all on our website and we've prevailed every time. we also filed civil actions, i guess they recommended that we file more. we've done that a few times. also reese endly doing more and

more of that. we also are amending legislation filing new legislation suggesting that we do more with enforcement, filing liens ~. so, they're using our office, our office is becoming more progressive along those lines as well. so, moving forward, i think their suggestion that we do more with our remedies and liens is a good one, but i wanted to follow-up quickly with what representatives from dph said and just reiterate what she said. she is the board to consider, the ordinance to specifically authorize -- i have to read t. the recommendation a4 about the health code. i think you'll need to take a look at that. she's right. the health code doesn't specifically, i don't think, state about the permit revocation. so, i would ask you to look at that and if i can that because we do need health care to save that. otherwise the supervisor with

the olrc do great work and i ask that we be given more resources, too, so we can continue to do the work we do. >> thank you. and i see no other departmental speakers. i think we should open this up for public comment now. i wanted to shea that [speaker not understood] from the chinese progressive association, jose from young workers united and [speaker not understood] from filipino community center and probably others that participated in the task force are here. i'd like to open it up for public comment if there is anyone that would like to make remarks. so, please come forward. we're limiting it to 2 minutes per person. and i believe there are translators if necessary, too. okay, i'm leone, i speak cantonese. and i was working in [speaker

not understood] season restaurant. [speaking through interpreter] so, i'm a worker at all season restaurant and while working at the restaurant i did not receive minimum wage. i did not receive overtime pay or paid sick leave or any other health benefits including health care security ordinance. and when i started working there i was not informed of any of my rights as a worker, and in fact it was not until a few weeks into my employment that i learned that i had these rights through my coworkers.

so, because i what in fear of losing my job, i stuck around to work at this workplace for over a year and it was by chance that i had learned that san francisco had the office of labor center enforcement and it was through the chinese progressive association, through their help i was connected up with compliance officer robin ho and they helped me