Published July 15, 2022

The San Francisco Living Wage Coalition worked with the Budget Justice Coalition to campaign for funding in the City budget to increase the minimum rate under the Minimum Compensation Ordinance. The Minimum Compensation Ordinance, which covers city-funded nonprofit workers, IHSS home health care aides and CalWORKs parents in community service jobs, provides a minimum rate increase on July 1 of each year based on the prior year’s increase in the Bay Area Consumer Price Index to keep up with inflation. But the wage increase can be deferred unless the City appropriates additional funds to nonprofits and the Controller certifies that such funds are sufficient to pay for the increase. The CPI increase for 2021, what is considered the rate of inflation, was 3.211 percent for the greater Bay Area. But for the year up to April, the last month that statistics are available, showed inflation running at 4.996 percent for the greater Bay Area, which is lower than the national rate. The Living Wage Coalition estimated that it would take about $17 million to increase the minimum rate by 3.211 percent and provide a comparable wage increase to everyone earning up to $30 per hour. The Mayor put $20 million in her budget for 5.25 percent wage increases for all nonprofit workers. The Coalition is skeptical about whether that will be enough money to provide the higher wage increases. We will monitor the implementation of the wage increase to ensure that allocations of funding are going from the departments to nonprofit organizations.