eliminating wage discrimination is not only a matter of fairness. it will have real material impacts on women, their families, and society as a whole. my legislation will take a step and it's only a step in ensuring that taxpayer dollars that we as a city spend are actually spent on contractors that pay women equally for the work they do. last year the city and county of san francisco paid $5.2 billion to vendors. if we were to institute policies that ensure equal pay for all workers, we can actually make a difference on the lives of thousands of women. our legislation, i believe, is a modest effort that does the following. it adds a new section to the administrative code's nondiscrimination provisions which require all city contractors with at least 20

employees and all city contractors with a grant agreement of 50,000 and more to submit an annual equal pay report to the city's human rights commission. the report will include summary compensation information for employees, identify by gender and race. please note that we are aware that 14,000 vendors with the city and county of san francisco in fiscal year 2014 would meet this requirement and the controller's office estimates that 11% of city vendors have 20 or more employees. therefore, we estimate that only 1,540 of the 14,000 vendors that the city employs would be impacted. again, only 1,540 -- 1500 of 14,000 vendors. the legislation creates an initial phase during which the

legislation will actually not go into effect or at least the data collecting requirement. during that period the director of the human rights commission is charged with the responsibility of convening a working group to design a data collection system that is best suited to both identify if wage discrimination is taking place at a workplace and to also minimize the administrative burden on city contractors. the board of supervisors mayor's office and the commission on the status of women will appoint members to this working group. and let me say that i at some point when we began this process, we thought of legislating the exact data that the city should collect, but we thought it was important to be as inclusive as possible to have this wait period so that we gave every person who may have a say on this an opportunity to weigh in.

after conversationses with martha burk who designed the data collection system for new mexico, we created in this legislation the equal pay advisory board which will be responsible for designing the right system for san francisco. collecting the right data is complicated and we want to make sure that the people designing the system have the proper expertise to do this right. for this reason we specify the qualifications necessary for each of the seven members for the advisory board, which will include a person who has worked as a discrimination or employment lawyer with an emphasis on gender equity, a person who works in human resources responsible for diversity, a person who has worked on quantitative gender analysis including statistic, and i want to thank the commission on the status of women, after speaking to the president we also provided a copy of the legislation to their director more than a

month before this vote. and i want to thank the commission on the status of women for its feedback, for its expertise which we have incorporated the comments that they gave us. after initial phase-in period of the human rights commission believes that wage discrimination has taken place at a particular business, it can proactively investigate the business to determine whether workers receive equal pay for equal work. if a human rights commission determines that the employer has violated equal pay laws, the commission can recommend that the city department that contracts with that vendor issue penalties against the vendor and/or terminate and/or suspend any outstanding contract with the city. the human rights commission is being asked under this law to report annually to the board of supervisors on the data that it collects. any trends in pay discrimination, the number of investigationses it commence based on the reports that it

receives and the number of contractors that were penalized for violating equal pay laws. discrimination based on sex and race is already prohibited in the city's administrative code and by federal law. however, the human rights commission only enforces the provisions at this point when individuals file allegations of unequal pay. the problem is that it is simply impossible for women to determine whether they are victims of wage discrimination because, as a 2011 survey from the institute for women's policy research found, about half of workers report that the discussion of wage and salary information is either discouraged or actually prohibited in the workplace. there is essentially a culture of secrecy around compensation which has allowed this wage disparity to remain countrywide for more than 50 years.

this legislation is groundbreaking because it provides the human rights commission the data it needs to proactively investigate businesses without having to rely on individual worker complaints and therefore ensure equal pay at hundreds of businesses that contract with the city and county of san francisco. the legislation is also unique in that it contains consequences he for contractors that are violating equal pay laws ~. if after an investigation the human rights commission believes that discrimination has occurred, the contractor can be required to pay monetary penalties or risk losing its contract with the city. we are the first government entity to attach consequences to failure to comply with equal pay laws. i want to make it clear that the passage of this legislation, the discussion on what data to collect and how to do so is only the beginning once this legislation is passed. before any provision of the ordinance related to the equal pay report goes into effect,

the equal pay advisory board that is created by this law must be fully in panel and it would take up to at least three months during which it would hold public hearings and ultimately this advisory board must return to the board of supervisors with recommendations on the best data collection method as well as any other trailing legislation that is needed to achieve the recommendations. we wanted to make sure that this piece of legislation did not go into effect until that work was completed. the advisory board had six months from its inaugural meeting to bring its recommendationses to the board. therefore, nothing will go into effect until at the earliest nine months after passage of the ordinance. in fact, we know that it could take and probably will take longer, depending on the recommendations of the advisory

board. passing this legislation is simply the first step and it puts us on record that the main thing we are doing today is that we are committing ourselves to end the secrecy. i want to thank a number of organizations that have supported this ordinance, including the equal rights advocates, the california chapter of the national organization for women, now, the legal aid society, the employment law center, san francisco women's political committee, la rasa central [speaker not understood], the asian law caucus, the bay area equal pay collaborative, the california teachers association, the california nurses association, the national union of health care workers and [speaker not understood] employees international. i want to make one point, that in response to a comment from the san francisco chamber of commerce, i will be here by

making a motion to add the following language on page 5 line 24. and i quote, "the city will not disclose any information contained in the equal pay report that qualifies as a trade secret or proprietary information." the concern that was raised to us by the san francisco chamber of commerce -- and we welcome the feedback -- is that there might be proprietary information that they do not want to see disclosed as part of the report or as part of a government records request. the language that i move to include in the ordinance addresses that concern. i want to just end my remarks by noting a couple of points that have been raised. we introduced this piece of legislation more than a month ago. there has been actually a lot

of media that has been given to this legislation, including an article in -- front page article in the san francisco chronicle. this piece of legislation has been available to anyone who is interested in the issue. we have spoken, as i said earlier, to the san francisco chamber of commerce and mr. lazarus who spoke on behalf of the chamber of commerce indicated that he supports the aim of the legislation and that he feels better about it with the incorporation of the amendment that i just moved. we also set up a meeting with a number of contractors who during the hearing indicated some concern or desire to meet. we set up the meeting, but that meeting -- they did not attend the meeting, but we continue to extend our offer to meet with them whenever they're willing and able. the small business commission heard this legislation and

supports the aim of the legislation, but it decided that it did not want to take a position on the legislation without actually knowing what the recommendations from the equal pay advisory board will be. again, without actually knowing what body is created by this ordinance will have to say in term of the specifics. one question that has been raised is the question of whether or not we want to do the same for city agencies. and let me say that we don't need legislation to make that happen. i believe that as we require contractors to provide us information, that we in the city and county of san francisco should do as well. my understanding that about 20 years ago there was an audit that the city conducted, but we are happy to work with any city department to make sure that this is not only something we require of vendors, but again, that we make sure that this is

incorporated into every area of operations of the city and county of san francisco. i want to thank my co-sponsors for their support, supervisor kim, supervisor avalos, supervisor mar, and supervisor farrell, and i especially want to thank supervisor kim and her staff who had been working with us. and, colleagues, i look forward to your support of this legislation. and i will close by noting the incredible work that has been done by hillary rhonan from my office who has been working on this for months, and it's greatly appreciated, hillary. thank you. >> thank you. >> sorry, i do make a motion to amend along the lines that i described. >> supervisor campos has made a number of amendments, seconded by supervisor kim. colleagues, can we take the amendments without -- okay, let's continue discussion on this. supervisor tang.

>> did supervisor breed -- >> why don't we go -- >> i guess i have a question about the amendment to the city attorney, but i don't know if anyone else has a question -- >> >> we haven't voted on the amendments yet so we're open to discussion on the underlying amendments or the ordinance supervisor campos has made. so, supervisor tang. ~ >> thank you. first of all, i do want to thank supervisor david campos for bringing this attention to the board of supervisors. i think it's a very important one. and as a woman, i support equal pay for equal work, absolutely. i also agree with data collection and the important role it can play to figure out if there are any disparities we need to address in issues. of course, i also want to take the opportunity to acknowledge all of the work that's been done by past generations, by current generation of people on the national level to address these issues and make sure that there is equality for women in the working world. however, i do have a couple of concerns with the legislation. again, not with the goal and

the intent of the legislation, but a couple of process issues. for one, the requirement that you must submit this information for compensation for all of city contractors, 20 or more employees worldwide, and with contracts $50,000 or more, i think that this would significantly impact many of our small business he and more importantly, many, many of our nonprofits in the city that contract with us ~. these are the same nonprofits that this board ha fought to provide funding for and under this legislation the way it is currently written will apply to them, it would apply to organizations such as old school cafe, wu yee children services, [speaker not understood], asian women shelter, mission neighborhood centers, the african-american art ask culture complex, [speaker not understood], self-help for the elderly, the list goes on ~. as we all know, many of these organizations, they really struggle for every little bit of funding that we can provide to them to be able to carry out

the services that they provide for our community. i think that this reporting requirement will be a huge burden for them, not to mention some of the training that will have to take place in order for them to all comply with this requirement. currently, i did want to point out that there are reporting requirements that these nonprofits do have to comply with if they contract with the city and those that receive grants through departments such as dcyf, currently for one, they must submit their payroll registry to the city to match against their invoice and they must also submit through our city database the name of staff, the positions, and the cost. all of this really just to say that there may be information right now that those organizations that contract with the city that we can use actually and potentially repurpose for this reporting requirement and that it would have been great to involve departments such as dcyf in fleshing out some of these requirements. in addition to the nonprofits, most of our city contractors do have stringent requirements for

equal pay as well. for example, for public works contracts throughout the state of california, contractors and subcontractors are required to pay prevailing wages for all of their field labor. state requirements also dictate the required hourly wage levels for each trade to be paid directly to the workers whether you are a female or a male. so, although i do agree with the data collection as a useful tool, i just question the group and organizations that's included as part of this because i think that many of them actually have many requirements they have to abide by already. other issues that i believe should be sorted out before hand -- and i do appreciate there is a nine-month what we've been calling a gestation period before they take effect, i think a lot of thesev things should be addressed up front at the beginning. furthermore, many businesses, especially those between 20 to 50 employees, a lot of them don't have in-house hr support staff and, so, this reporting requirement will be something that will pose many resource challenges as well as some

privacy concerns. some of my ion thoughts about supporting women in the workforce, i think it's really important that he we think about our younger girls, our students, our younger women right now. ~ my own and think about how we can create opportunities and mentor ship programs for them in fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. those are fields that have been shown to have incredible disparities between men and women right now and it's something we can do to address it for our younger generation. it's something that i heavily support. it's why i through our budget process allocated funding to all of our district 4 public schools to provide them grants so that they can support efforts in stem. so, again, i just really want to reiterate think absolutely support the intention of this legislation. i just feel there are some other departments or commissions that could have been consulted more thoroughly before hand. i know that there's been a lot

of talk about process, but i think that not the department of women, but the commission in particular could have been -- would like to see this ordinance some more and think about it more thoroughly, so, i'd like to support that. i think that dcyf, for example, which issues grants so many of our nonprofits in the city would like the opportunity to comment on this. the small business commission did see this last night on their own initiative and i'm really glad that they did so. and as well as the hrc, i do understand that they weighed in on this also in support of this legislation even though they did bring up some concerns. so, with that said, again, i just really want to see us work together to make this an even more impactful legislation to really look hard at some of the information that's already provided to us currently, and see how we cannot reinvent the wheel but just repurpose some of the information so it's not an incredible extra burden for many of our nonprofits or public -- public works contracts that do business with the city. so, with that said, i'd like to make a motion and see if we can

refer this to committee with reference to the commission on status of women to dcyf and to hrc as well. thank you. >> okay. supervisor tang has made a motion that this be referred to committee with reference to those various commissions as seconded by supervisor breed. i was just told by our board clerk that the motion to refer to committee takes precedence over the motion to amend so we'll take it in that order. but why don't we continue discussion. supervisor kim. >> thank you, president chiu. just speaking on the policy itself, first of all, i do want to recognize the work of supervisor david campos's office for bringing this forward and i wanted to speak as to why it was really important to me on a personal level to co-sponsor this ordinance. i am lucky and fortunate that here in the city of san francisco that my salary is set by the city charter. i know that i'm paid equal pay as my male colleagues on this

board of supervisors. however, i'm fully aware that if and when i leave city hall that i may make less than my male colleagues after i leave for the same work. and i think it's ip credibly important that as we take this major policy stance that we believe in equal pay for equal work, that we really do that, particularly with the actual entities, our contractors that are paid public dollars, our taxpayer dollars, to make sure that they are pursuing the work of making sure that women get equal pay for equal work. these are organizations and for profit and nonprofit entities that are getting public taxpayer dollars and i believe that we absolutely have a right in those cases to know whether or not women are getting paid the same rate men are for doing equal work within the organizations. i also want to really emphasize the parameters of the ordinance that we are approving today.

this ordinance nearly knishates this process. it sets up the equal pay advisory board which will then spend the next several months actually defining the specifics of the final recommendations that would put together how we would do the data gathering for this work. everyone in this room agrees with this policy. in fact, it's something that has been called as one of the top national priorities both by our president and, of course, by our leader pelosi most recently in her luncheon last monday with previous secretary of state hillary clinton. it was one of the biggest calls that our country is making to make sure that 50% of our population make the same pay for the same work that they do here in our country. often on a national level we find that things move to a gridlock in d.c. and that often things -- policy calls like

raising the minimum wage have to be taken on at a local level because it can't be taken on in washington, d.c. because of the gridlock at congress and senate. here in this case the president was actually able to move forward the same policy for contractors to the government to make sure that they report whether they payee equal pay for equal work, and i think it's absolutely appropriate for san francisco to follow and do the same. now, if this ordinance and legislation actually embodied the recommendationses and the specifics of how we do data gathering, ~ i would support a continuance. i absolutely believe in a full fledged process to make sure that all stakeholders are heard and that we are able to incorporate a lot of different concepts, whether it's from dcyf, the chamber of commerce, our small business commission, department of women and status. if this ordinance just knishates the process and sets

the equal pay advisory board who then over the next couple of months go through the process of getting all of this input, specifics on how we can treat nonprofits, how we can treat organizations with 20 to 50 employees or 20 to 100 employees, how we can treat larger organizations that may have a greater capacity to report, all of this will get worked out in the next several months. and the actual date by which we request these reports won't be until september 2015. so, i think being that this ordinance just sets out the process, i think that it's important that we start it as early as possible so we can give maximum time to the process to make sure that we can maximize our input from our stakeholders and make sure that we have a really good process in place by september by which we can collect this really important reporting. women deserve to be paid for the work that they do and they deserve to be paid at the equal

rate that men do. and i feel like we just can't wait to get this process started so that we can make sure that those that are making -- our taxpayer dollars are absolutely accountable to this revision we all believe in. >> supervisor avalos. >> thank you. i just want to thank supervisor campos for bringing this forward and for all the co-sponsors as well, and i want to thank supervisor campos and his staff for doing the work to bring this together. i know it was a very involved process, did a lot of work working with many, many stakeholder to make it happen. i actually have worked over the years in nonprofits and i've seen women don't get the equal pay that men get in a setting and i think nonprofits should be held accountable to be able to follow this legislation. so, i don't see a real problem in that whatsoever. and i'm not going to speak much longer than this, except that a continuance really doesn't make any sense especially when this

should have happened 20 years ago, so, we can't wait any longer. >> supervisor yee. >> thank you, president chiu. i want to thank you -- thank supervisor campos and the other author, coauthors of this legislation. i'm going to be fully supporting the intent of this and it really is an intent to get going, further momentum to really figure out how we're going to collect data. and if it were a little more complex in terms of what we're asking, i would say yes, let's continue it, but what i'm reading into this is that everybody believes that women are getting the same pay and we could just go as slow as molasses on this. i come from the nonprofit world. i did it for 40 years. some of us in the nonprofit

world would feel very proud to actually show that we give equal pay. so, whether i came from the ywca or attending clinic or children services, the people that i'm surrounded with would be proud to say that, yeah, we give equal pay and we can prove it. here it is. what i like about this legislation that's built in is that you have an opportunity to express or articulate some of the difficulties that one group of business or organizations might have, then hopefully this group of people that's putting this together will take that into consideration. but it's very upsetting. after all these years we're still dealing with this, so, i'm supporting it. >> supervisor breed. >> thank you.

i have a question to the city attorney on clarification of the proposed amendment to the legislation and wanting to understand whether or not that's possible. and can you explain how it's possible to avoid, for example, all of this information is subject to the sunshine ordinance from my understanding, and i just want to get a clear understanding of how it's possible to ensure that some information isn't. >> sure, deputy city attorney jon givner. but before i get to your question, supervisor breed, just one clarification on the amendment. supervisor campos, i believe, had circulated written draft of the amendment. the language in the written draft doesn't exactly mirror the language that you had, supervisor campos, but it reaches the same point, so, i just wanted to clarify for the

benefit of the public. the amendment essentially says that when contractors turn over information to us, if the information they are providing to us is a protected trade secret or proprietary information that's confidential under the law, the hrc or any other city agency cannot disclose that to the public. so, this ordinance can't override the sunshine ordinance. whether information -- whether a particular piece of information that's provided by a contractor is a trade secret or is proprietary is really a factual determination. so, the hrc will be looking at whatever data they have if there is a sunshine request, working with my office to determine whether any -- whether that information is protected trade secret or protected proprietary information. and if it is, hrc won't disclose it. so, this amendment, i think, could be described as

clarifying that hrc will not turn over information that's protected from disclosure, but the ordinance would not override the sunshine ordinance. >> thank you. and i have some questions about the legislation. from my perspective, it's clear that this is a board of supervisors that supports equal pay as supervisor kim ha stated. i just want to make sure that whatever we choose to do it's responsible, it's substantive and it doesn't just pay lip service to the problem. ~ has i know that several years back when sexual harassment cases were coming before the courts there were a number of sexual harassment cases, a number of changes to a lot of policies in the city to now require that we go through i think a 2-1/2-hour sexual harassment training to ensure that we understand what the rules and regulations are as it relates to sexual

harassment in the workplace. and i think that it is appropriate that we look at doing something that significant as it relates to equal pay in our city. a couple questions i guess i had, this is unclear to me because specifically as a former nonprofit director who ran one of the city-funded nonprofits who would be -- who would fall under the category to report, i don't understand what's expected of me or what would have been expected of me to report. so, i guess i've been -- supervisor campos explained that part of this process involves this committee or task force or advisory committee being put together. i don't see a nonprofit agency representative listed, but more importantly i gue