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

the olrc has taken a different approach than most enforcement agencies which distinguishes the agency and some of its success. when a claimant files a complaint at the olrc in san francisco, the agency investigates all of the workers in the business. the agency does not make out one individual claimant, come to a conference with the employer a would happen if a complaint is filed at the state. that encourages workers to come forward who might otherwise be fearful and we maintain the confidentiality of the claimant's identity to the extent that we can through the process. another thing that distinguishes our enforcement strategy is that we work closely with the collaborative of community-based organizations and that collaborative is under contrived to the tune of about $460,000 a year. it's a collaborative now of six community-based agencies who you'll hear from later in this testimony. but their work is critical because they are culturally competent and they have relationships in the community and sometimes workers feel more comfortable approaching a community agency than bringing a c

so, through, you know, working with robin at olrc we were able to come to a settlement, but it was not before i found out through the newspaper that actually the restaurant had got their health license suspended by dph so i would just say i was lucky enough to be able to get all of my back wages back and thanks to the work of olrc and i would just say that i encourage the board of supervisors to continue to support the collaboration between the different city departments to continue to enforce labor laws so all workers can have their just compensation. thank you. >> thank you to mr. [speaker not understood] for your courage on that. and thanks to cpa and also robin ho [speaker not understood] to make sure that is a great example. i believe [speaker not understood] luis is here and terry from the fcc as well. >>> regards to everybody. my name is [speaker not understood], a victim of wage theft, a member of filipino community center and [speaker not understood]. it is a positive aspect of collaboration between workers, the community-based organization, the lawyers and [speaker not unders

and, so, they introduce us like the olrc to give us more help and, you know, for -- it is easier, it became easier for us to win this legal battle because of this legal advocates like the olse, like the -- how do you call that? employment [speaker not understood] and of course the filipino community center. >> thank you for being such a great leader and mr. wu as well from cpa. i think it is a perfect example of worker empowerment from worker centers and model of city departments working with you. thank you for the example. >>> thank you so much. >> i know there may be other workers that are here as well, but i'd just like to open up for public comment. go ahead, mr. [speaker not understood]. >>> my name is [speaker not understood]. thank you, supervisors. i'm from the scc. over the years like the city we've been able to recover over a million dollars in wages putting it back into the pockets of caregivers, like the filipino worker who work platt places like university mound. a lot of places across the west side and both of your districts, supervisors. there are so many care homes th