888 2733658 and the access code is 310745. inaudible . The members of the public will be calling in 888 2736538 and access code is 3103752. When prompted dial 120 be added to the speaker line and it will indicate that callers are entering the question and answer time but this is the Public Comment. If you call in before Public Comment is called, youll be added to the cue. Please mute the device youre listening to the meeting on. When its your time to speak, youll be prompted to do so. Its three minutes per speaker or otherwise established bit speaker. Please show the office of Small Business slide. Interest we will start with the reminder the Small Business commission can voice your concern about policies that affect the Small Businesses in San Francisco. And that the office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco, particularly in this local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters particularly at this time, find us online or via telephone. As always, our services are free of charge. Before item number one is called, i would like to thank Media Services and sfs gov tv for coordinating the livestream please call item number one. Youre muted. Call to order and role call, commissioner adams. role call 11. You have a quorum. Call item number 2. 200455, emergency ordinance, temporary right to reemployment following covid19 pandemic. And emergency ordinance temporarily creating a right to employment for certain employees laid off due to the covid19. If their employer seeks to fill the same position by a laidworker. The discussion and action item. The presenter is edward wright, legislative aid to gordon mar. Wonderful. Welcome edward. We are pleased to have you here and would you like to make your presentation . Im happy to. Supervisor mar is the author before you today. Thank you to the office of Small Business for your feedback and thank you to the Small Business commissioners for taking the time at this spent meeting to discuss the backtowork ordinance with us today. Im talk about a couple of Different Things and first, i want to share the background of why we introduced this ordinance and moving it forward. I want to share the details about what the ordinance currently written does and i want to talk about amendments that were preparing to change the scope of the ordinance in response to feedback from stakeholders, includes a number of the members of this commission and finally, any additional feedback on what the feedback has to share with us. This crisis is a state of emergency for laidoff workers and the pace is greaterrer than the Great Depression and 110 people in San Francisco have lost their jobs representing tens of thousands of livelihoods in economic uncertainty. Consequences of longterm employment included that the evidence of job loss is clear and that could lead to loss of next in the shortterm to lower wages in the longterm and result in physical health and mortality rates for workers who lost their jobs and further, it hampers childrens educational process and workers who lose their job involuntarily experience worse Health Outcomes and during severe downturns, it could lead to life reduction of 1. 2 years and that it might r pai. inaudible . We know this ordinance is bull because we feel we have to be bull to address the urgency of our unemployment crisis. This ordinance is a novel policy area and its so because the circumstances we face are novel. And this ordinance is an emergency ordinance because the crisis we face is urgent, too. Still, we make significant and substantive amendments to narrow the scope of the ordinance. In feedback, weve heard from the sector and specifically from Small Business owners. So first, i wanted to briefly talk about the ordinance as its written before talking through some of the amendments were preparing. I want to say we dont have the amendments drafted to share with the commission today and im happy to share the copy of the minutes as soon as we have the draft. In a current version of the emergency ordinance, workers have the right of first refusal for their jobs if and when their former employer are reopens and rehires. This would be prioritized by seniority in each job classification and it requires comparative wages, scheduling and benefits unless the employer is unable to maintain terms in which case they are affected. This requires employers to provide notice to the city of layoffs of the workers and provide them with information on available city resources as a part of the requirements. In terms who is covered, the emergency ordinance is currently written and applies this to any employer laying off ten or more employees starting on february 25th, 2020, the date of the emergency. And it does not cover employers of fewer than ten employees and does not cover employers who do not lay off ten or more employees in ten or more days or contractors and collective bargaining agreements. Theres a waiver included. Any questions and i will talk through amendments that were preparing, as well. Commissioners, any questions for edward . I say keep going. I have one quick question. But commissioner ukudio has a question, as well. Thank you, edward. In the bill, how do we prepare e an employer is not able to rehire folks back . Yes, that was most likely reset by regulations to the issue by the office of labor standards enforcements. It wasnt something in the ordinance. How did you come up with ten employees . We looked at the Healthcare Security ordinance and what those acts with the mass layoff, which was roughly half of the number of employees at a distance and, then, took the 20 employees as the threshold to help their security ordinance and took half of that. That was representing a mass layoff. I missed the last part. Did other people hear that . Can you repeat the last point, please . Yes. So, basically, taking half inaudible . Half by the Healthcare Security ordinance. I just have one more. Why seniority . Seniority is a common standard in righttorecall language for employees and so were taking the most frequent standard that exists and recalling what already exists and then expanding the application to additional workers. Ten employees is the right amount of people for this work . Im happy to talk about amendments to address that point. Are there any other commissioner questions . Seeing none, i have a question. Regarding the ten or more employees in the draft originally as its currently written, it says ten employees nationally, globally, in california or in San Francisco . Ten employees locally. Globally. And finally, ten people in nashville, where i have ten employees, i would have to notify San Francisco. You would not. They would not be ann titled to reemployment. If i laid off nine employees in nashville and one in San Francisco, i would have to notify the city with represent to the one employee . I dont think so. I think it would be triggered by ten layoffs in San Francisco. Thats definitely what you just said, so earlier you said ten globally, but now its ten only in San Francisco . So theres two definitions being referred to and one is the employer definition and thats defined as ten employees globally, but the layoff definition is ten or more employees, meaning San Francisco workers laid off within a 30day period. There ok, thank you for that clarification. Please proceed. Thank you. And so what we know that workers are facing a crisis right now, so a Small Businesses. We know Small Businesses need support now more than ever and ill be sharing some of the changes well be making to this ordinance to specifically address the concerns that we heard from Small Business owners. I did want to share with the commission that our office is actively working on legislation to waive Business Registration and business fees most impacted by the covid19 crisis and we hope to have a date on that that i can share with you soon. I did want to mention that we have spoken with more business stakeholders in this legislation, including dozens of Small Business owners, the San Francisco commerce, community on jobs, the San Francisco hospital hospital, among others. We know this is the life blood of our city and they are facing a central crisis and after i go through the amendments were proposing, if you have additional feedback, i would appreciate this opportunity. So for the amendment, we are intending to amend the definition of employer to exempt employers with fewer than 75 employees and this would be tying the definition back to the act of neglec flexibility with statewide employees and the definition of employer to exempt Healthcare Operations employers as defined in the april 29t april 29th order of the Public Health officer. And that would include most public hospitals. Further, we intend to amend the employee definition to exempt employees who are making more than 100 or 120 of the Median Income as defined by housing and community development. In addition, we intend to amend the reemployment revisions to provide exemption for making the reemployment offer based on the information of misconduct found for former employees. If an employee discovers a former worker committed misconduct, they would be exempt and that exemption would apply to the terms and after bringing back a worker facing misconduct, you are exempt from having to employ them. That would include severance agreements, so laid off workers entering so severance agreement and this right to employment is not apprized of that. And finally, we would be amending the notification requirements, removing section 5a4 and section 5a5 entirely. These, we understand, to be the most burdensome administrative requirements for the businesses applied to, as well as to the office of layer standards enforcements, so this is essentially the optimum requirements. And then, finally, to allow for notification by email or text before mail so that businesses only have to mail if thats an ox. Option. Im happy to answer my questions on this that i just talked through. Any questions . While we wait, we have two questions for you. With respect to employment being exempt if theres evidence of misconduct, how would an employer establish this misconduct . What the burden here that you te employer has to meet to establish that misconduct . We dont have the language forecastedrafted yet and im noi can answer that specifically. But the intention that would it would be some kind of evidence that would be demonstrating that everything is caught up that happened. And so that could be theft, it could be misrepresentation of facts and any number of examples of misconduct. But at this point, you cant give us any information that we could provide to employers about how they would satisfy the requirement, whatever evidence would be required . We dont have that amendment drafted yet. Another question, but i will defer to my colleagues first. Hi, edward and thank you for coming today. I am curious about your outreach. You had mentioned to get to this, you had spoken to more businesses or business organizations and stakeholders than you ever had and im kind of curious as to what their overall responses were and what type of interaction you had with them. Thank you for that question there was a range of responses to the ordinance all the way from support. We did speak with a number of Small Businesses in our district who support ordinances to outright opposition. And i think there were a diverse until of concernnumber of conce. We are hoping to address these concerns and we heard from a lot of Small Businesses, which is why we landed on Small Businesses and weve heard from quite a few Healthcare Providers with the Current Health circumstances that they felt that the healthcare sector should exempted, which is why weve included that exemption and to, then, weve heard concerns about not having the kind of misconduct exemption were working on to ensure that there is offramps for those job offers and a good reason to not issue employment offer. So can i ask, with all of these amendments or exemptions, who are you hoping to really be able to, like i dont know. Who is going to be compliant and who is going to be retain these jobs the way they want . So with these amendments, this ordinance will still apply to any San Francisco employer with more than 75 employees and laid off ten or more workers within 30 day, based on the applications we already have and the unemployment numbers that are trickling in, we expect that that will apply to thousands of San Francisco workers. And even with the ami narrowings, were focusing more on workers and expect there are thousands. And those businesses that would apply to, are they in favour of your legislation . Im not sure in their i in favor. We understand that that our Small Businesses would be the most burdened by this, which is why were purple this. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner dooley. Hi. I wanted to ask about the seniority and how you would be asking people to determine that. I know that i work in restaurants as im a fluoresce d i see many people come is go for awhile and come back and then im just wondering whether theyre cumulative time in that business will count as where they would be in the seniority order or not. Its something ive seen a lot in restaurants. It would be determined by the date of hire for determining employment that was severed. So your most recent. Commissioner ozunis. New for being here, edward. Im representing the supervisors office. And i mean, yes, if anything is most important in this crisis, its class and the need for our workers to be supported and as Small Businesses are often one in the same as workers, i think its important to consider the good will piece and kind of the realities of Small Businesses are going to be calling people that they ed thi they had to le. It takes a lot of money and ti time. Sometimes the posts dont get hit and so, i think that Small Businesses are really going to comply wit intent of this either way and i just inaudible . A couple of questions i have, february 25th, when the order was in place, that was the next month and why the february 25th date of this start date . I do have some concerns with the oast background noise . Commissioner, wil while youe talking, if you could turn down the speaker, because your microphone is feeding back into your microphone and turn the speakerrer back up. The requirements to the city are waived and those are some of the questions that i have. Thank you for that question. Ill take that in turn. And so, first, as to why february 25th, was chosen as a start day for flexibility, that was the date Public Health emergency was declared and that is predated with the shelterinplace order. However, weve heard from workers, as well alzheimers ase employers prior to the shelterinplace being ordered in response to the Public Health emergency and so that is why that date was chosen. And in terms of the burden of proof of Small Businesses, Small Businesses would be exempt to hire. This ordinance after amended would not apply at all to any business with fewer than 75 employees. In terms of the details regulatory language or the language of a rule that is issued, those are kind of always issued after an ordinance takes effect and to give additional clarity for the implementing agency for the specific details and the law that may not be appropriate by code. And with that said, we have the specific amendment language and im happy to share that with you and talk through it. Great. So im going to ask my second question with respect to the amendment part of the presentation and you mentioned that severance agreements would be exempt. How is severance agreement being defined . For instance, i know Many Employers, myself included, when we had to lay folks off, i was very concerned about my employees having money for groceries and shortterm supplies. That period around march 20t 20th was very intense, as im sure you recall. I know Many Employers, lets leave myself out of this, Many Employers informally did thing for their employees and some continued health insurance, some did cash dispersals and many did a number of Different Things. With respect to a severance agreement, how are you defining that . Are you expecting a document that is signed by both parties or do some of these excessivseverance payments thate provided in excess of the employment agreement, would those also be severance agreements . It would probably be the narrower definition of severance agreements as it goes to the broader one as you just talked through it. With that said, this is to be heard at committee next thursday and we have between now and then to finalize any amendment language and, of course, it would be heard a