San Francisco Living Wage Laws

Areas of Improvement and Expansion

Living Wage policies ensure that anyone who works full-time is able to survive on what they earn and feed their family without needing to rely on the taxpayers for emergency health care, food stamps or other supports to make ends meet.  The San Francisco Living Wage laws (called the Minimum Compensation Ordinance and Health Care Accountability Ordinance) have raised the minimum wage and provided health care coverage for employees of businesses and non-profits receiving service contracts and leases from the City, The San Francisco ordinance sets a living wage standard at $11.54 per hour with employer-paid health benefits and paid vacation for workers at for-profit city contractors. 

1. Provide funding to non-profits in the budget for cost-of-living adjustments to the MCO rate based on the Bay Area Consumer Price Index

The annual-cost-of-living increase on January 1 for workers at non-profit agencies is deferred until either the Mayor or the Board of Supervisors put money in the budget to pass-through to the non-profits. They are currently at the 2008 rate of $11.03 per hour. Home care workers get a cash equivalent for the 12 paid days off and are at a $11.54 per hour.

Facing the reality of the current budget crisis and the massive lay-offs of public sector workers and cuts to non-profit agencies, we do not expect increased funding to provide cost-of-living increases to non-profit workers. But we are working on a long-term public education campaign to build support for cost-of-living adjustments. 

2.  Raising the base wage rate in the Minimum Compensation Ordinance

According to a 2007 survey by the California Budget Project, the self-sufficiency wage for a single parent family with one child in the greater Bay Area is $31.67 per hour. For a single adult, it is $14.25 per hour. We don’t expect to increase the base wage this much in the near future. This also is a long-term campaign.

3.  Increasing the monthly General Assistance grant or Personal Assisted Employment Services stipend

About 450 people are working every week to qualify for GA grants and PAES stipends of around $342 per month, doing jobs such as sweeping streets, cleaning MUNI buses, maintaining city parks and doing janitorial work at General Hospital, jobs that were previously done by city workers who received a family-supporting wage.  We would like to see these monthly grants increased so that these recipients can transition from workfare to unsubsidized employment.

4.  Funding the Community Jobs Program to provide community service jobs to 400 CalWORKs recipients and 250 County Adult Assistance Program participants

5. Extend health benefits under the Health Care Accountability Ordinance to dependents, spouses and domestic partners of employees

This also is a long-term goal that would require the pass-through of funds to non-profits. 

6.  Require that the Minimum Compensation Ordinance cover anyone who works on a city service contract rather than the current requirement of 4 hours per week working on a city service contract

Currently the Ordinance only covers those who work on a city service contract a minimum of four hours per week.  Because of this loophole, unscrupulous employers are spreading the city work among enough workers in order to be exempt from the MCO.  Since they are not required to report such workers, employers can evade the law and pay them lower than MCO wages.  One such company was Angelica Textile Services, which was contracted for laundry service at SF General Hospital.  Since the hour threshold is in the definitions part of the ordinance, companies do not even have to request a waiver or exemption from the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.  OLSE does not know how many companies are not paying the MCO wage by claiming their employees work less than the hour threshold under the ordinance.

The City of Hayward’s living wage law does not have an hour requirement and it was upheld in a decision by the Alameda Superior Court in a lawsuit by Cintas laundry company.

We believe that if a worker is doing any work on a city service contract, they should be paid a living wage.  We don't want our tax dollars and city business going to poverty wage employers.

7. Expand the Minimum Compensation Ordinance to include workers on other City property besides the airport, such as at the Port, Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, Candlestick Park, AT&T Park, Moscone Convention Center, Bill Graham Auditorium, Golden Gate Park, Park and Recreation lands, city-owned golf courses and city-owned buildings. We would need to avoid having the poison pill of a “tip credit,” or treating tipped employees differently.

8.  Require that the job descriptions of jobs in the Community Jobs Program for CalWORKs and PAES participants match the minimum qualifications for entry-level City jobs and that participants are fast-tracked into available City jobs.

Department of Human Resources works with the Human Services Agency in developing the job descriptions

9.  Require that covered employers post the MCO and HCAO requirements in the workplace

Just as is done with the Minimum Wage Ordinance

10.  Adequate funding to the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and to community organizations to do community based education and outreach on the wage and benefit laws. 

Another approach to developing a more effective monitoring and enforcement of San Francisco’s wage and benefit laws is by a ballot referendum establishing the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement as an independent entity similar to the Controllers office, with a dedicated source of funding such as a $35 annual fee, possibly an increase on the business license fee. We believe that there has been undue influence by the Mayor’s office on some enforcement issues, such as signing off on a waiver from the provisions of the Health Care Accountability Ordinances for the businesses located in the remodeled Rincon Annex, which is on Port property and thereby covered by the ordinance.