Will be muted and in listening mode. When your item comes up, dial star 3 to be added to the speaker line. Its a quiet location speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or the device that you are listening to the meeting on. If you dial 3 before Public Comment is called, you will be added to the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, please mute the device and you are listening to the meeting on and when its time to speak you will be prompted to do so. Public comment is limit today three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established by the presiding officer of the meeting and an alarm will sound when the meeting time is finished. Speakers are requested but not require to state their names and its the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policies that effect Small Businesses in San Francisco. The office of Small Business is the best place to get answers about doing business in San Francisco particularly during the local emergency. If you need assistance with Small Business matters, at this time, you can find us online or via telephone. Our services are free of charge. Before item 1 is called id like to start by thanking Media Service and sfgovtv for coordinating this virtual hearing and livestream and thank you for assisting with the caller comment line. Please call item number 1v call to order and roll call. Commissioner adams is absent. [roll call] mr. President , you have a quorum. Thank you. Item number 2, please. Clerk item 2, board of supervisors file number 200830 police code right to reemployment following layoff due to covid19 pandemic. Ordinance and creating a right to reemployment and employees and laid off due to the covid19 pandemic if their employers seek to fill the same position previously held by the laid off employee or a substantiallily similar position and to reasonably accommodate employees who cannot work because of family hardship, discussion and action item and the presenter is edward, legislative aid to gordon mars. Welcome back and thank you for making yourself available to us again. Our thoughts are with supervisor mar and hope he is doing well. With that, well begin with your overview of the legislation that will be followed by commissioner questions, Public Comment and commissioner discussion. Edward, the floor is yours. Thank you very much and thank you to all the commissioners. Commissioner mar is doing well and thank you for keeping him in your thoughts. Were grateful to talk about this item and grateful to you for taking the time to discussion it and review it today. The back to work ordinance is an ordinance that would codify policies already in effect in law through an emergency ordinance that was enacted by the board of supervisors and also previously reviewed and discuss bid this body. So, out of respect for your time i wont repeat everything i said when i last was before you but ill try to focus on summarizing the policy, especially things that have changed in this new version versus emergency ordinance and changes that we made to the emergence ordinance after it was reviewed and discussed previously. It had changed since it was last considered and the emergency ordinance, however, the policy itself would not significantly change through this regular ordinance compared to the emergence ordinance in effect. Ut it simply, this ordinance asks that larger employers ploye rather than replace the workers. We knee theknow they have healts and unemployment can suppress an employees wages and lifetime earnings potential and we know that this intact lowwage workers and workers of color and we know that recall rates can help workers across the country and now in effect nor nonunion employees for larger employers here in San Francisco. With this law, laid off workers would have the right of first refusal for their jobs if or when their former employer reopens and rehires. Hiring would be prioritized by sen your tee and if a former employees position is not being rehired, it would be rehired any other similar position that it would qualify for. It also requires employers to provide notice to the city of layoffs and maintain records of the laid off workers and provide them with information on available city resources such as the oew hotline. It covers employers with 100 or more employees who layoff 10 or more eligible workers within 30 days and theyre employees who were employed for 90 days or longer and who have been laid off because of the publicHealth Emergency. Small businesses and Healthcare Operations employers are exempt as are independent contractors, employees covered by selective Bargaining Agreements and employees with severance agreements or committed misconduct discovered after their separation of employment. Based on Stakeholder Feedback during the emergency ordinance we made a series of pretty substantive amendments and they were based on your feedback, the feedback from the body so we really appreciate all of that. Just to summarize those changes that were made, the ordinance and further modeled in this regular ordinance, we exempted all employers with fewer than 100 employees and we exempted Healthcare Operations employers and hospital, doctor offices, et cetera, and we removed the 90day retention requirement and we added a carve out for employment misconduct for the reemployment offer and we also carved out ploys with severance agreements and removed the reviewed amount building requirement and those were removed and we also stream lined the process for the reemployment offer and were allowing reemployment offer by email or by text before mailing is required and it would only be required with a option and we sped up the timeframe for the reemployment offers. We authorized ose to issue regulation and do rulemaking in the emergency version so we have now changed that to oewd in the regular and districted reemployment to go to replace the hotline included in the employee notification with the one that is managed by oewd. So since then, those are the amendments summarized made after we last discussed it here. We made additional changes for this item. The regular version of that ordinance. So we updated the employee definition. The definition in the regular ordinance to this item is based on the term used in state labor code and wage orders and regulations and they in turn are used in the citys minimum wage ordinance, the Healthcare Security ordinance, the other ordinances as well. Under the emergency ordinance as well as the regular ordinance if enacted, if an employer under San Francisco minimum wage law theyre covered. Both apply to employers 100 or more employees with office or location and so just in short theres no intended substantive difference between the employer definitions from the emergency ordinance and the regular ordinance and we changed the wordings to be consis consistenn many other labor laws of San Francisco. We also change the Rulemaking Authority so were proposing moving that responsibility and ability from oewd as you may know, oewd is receiving the notices and managing the hotline for the workers so we feel it makes sense to also shift rulemaking responsibilities onto the office of economic and workforce development. And why were proposing a regular version of this ordinance. We have already reenacted the emergency ordinance and we will soon be introducing an additional reenactment of that. We cop continue to reenact the emergency ordinance every 60 days, however, given the on going nature of the Health Emergency and the many moving pieces for both workers and businesses we felt that codifying with a date certain for expiration would offer amount more predictability for everyone rather than reenacting it every 60 days. It would expire by operation of law one year from the Effective Date or the date on which the state of merge proclaimed on february 25th, 2020 terminates which date occurs latest. Now, that means the right to reemployment offer for eligibility workers laid off because of the publicHealth Emergency, would endure for up to a year or until the emergency ends. Eligibility organizers have to lack of funds and lack of work, closure or city of operations resulting from a Health Emergency, so, while the law generally is in effect until sunsets and unlike the emergency order, it doesnt have its eligibility or Effective Date tied to the publicHealth Emergency order it doesnt cover all employees just lows laid off because of covid impact or the impact of publicHealth Emergency. I wanted to respond that suggested that this ordinance would could or disadvantage workers of color and women, we disagree with that argument and we feel that the facts cited in report in its self countered that argument. Workers of color and women are over represented in the Hospitality Industry thats been most impacted by the pandemic and its seen the highest number of layoffs and the workers also most benefit from this ordinance. According to the same center for American Progress report that the office of Small Business cited in the legislative review, workers of color are the first to be fired during that term and theyre the last to be retired and Racial Discrimination will pronoun the economic Fallout Community of color unless lawmakers act now to prevent it. From march 1st, to july 24th of of the employees effected by warren act noticed layoffs in San Francisco, were in just three industries. Accommodations in food services, arts and entertainment and retail trade and of those three industries accommodations was by far the most impacted representing nearly half of all layoffs. These are the same that the central for American Progress reports as being both most have vulnerable and workers of color are over represented in low wage accommodations jobs, the very same with experience and the highest number of layoffs and the very same that would most benefit from the work of protections this ordinance kotarocodifies. It calls for lawmakers to act now to help prevent Racial Discrimination in rehiring of business to recover and that is partly what this ordinance does. A right to recall is something that is, as i mentioned earlier, in trying to collective Bargaining Agreements for most union arts across the country and what were proposing here is that we codify that policy for nonunion employees of large employers something that is already in effect in San Francisco and through the emergency ordinance that was already enacted by the board of supervisors. So what were proposing here is not a radical shift from current policy already in effect, its essentially just codifying that to have a date certain for the timeframe its in effect and im happy to take any questions from the commission. Thank you, i appreciate you coming in and presenting to us. With that, ill turn it over to my commissioners. My fellow commissioners. Do any of you have any questions . While we wait, edward, they may be formulating their questions. A quick question, my understanding is they would be 3216 is sitting on the governors desk right now, which is pretty similar legislation as i understand it. How do you how are you going to square that i guess if that passes . How do you see this playing with that legislation . Yeah, thank you for asking. So, the state bill on the governors desk is induce free specific. It does not apply broadly across indoes trees in the way its ordinance does. Where we target based on the size of the employer and the cause of the layoffs and the eligibility of the worker based on their prior tenure employment of that employer. We did not tie the specific to industry. Thats a main point of difference there. We should have a result of whether or not the governor signs that bill. Not too far in the future, gives us an opportunity to amend this in committee. Well introduce another reenactment of the emergency ordinance that will push back the effectiveness of the emergency ordinance for further 60 days. So, if the governor does sign that and we need to make an accommodation to our language to make sure its consistent or it doesnt present conflict there, ours goes farther, its something were open to doing. Ok. So, to the extent theres conflict or overlapping, should your legislation pass, you will amend to harmonize with 3216 assuming the governor signs it . Yes, we want to make it consistent. With the exception that ours applies to industries beyond the state bill. Understood. Commissioner hughie. Thank you, very much. I just had a couple quick questions. Im wondering in this number that you have of 1,347 workers received who received reemployment offers, what industries . I know you are talking a lot about hospitality but my understanding of hospitality is it like hotels and things like that and i have a very narrow frame of what im looking at. Theyre already unionized, the workers there are unionized so im wondering who is really i dont have a breakdown on this yet so its something we asked for and so were interested as they condition and other thing thing i noted is that a really large preportion of those have come in just in the last couple weeks and so this is something that we expect to continue to pick up and its still a relatively law and there are questions around compliance and whether or not all of the layoffs that happened would be eligible be being reported so its something that is further conversation in further attention paid to. Ok. So in this number, this is like, its a business with 100 or more employees. So you have no idea yet how many businesses. It could be like 13 businesses, right . That is true. Ok. And this is been this is effective add as of september 4. So this is like 10 days of data that were looking at . Yes. And there is a period of time that the employer has to provide that notice to the city so theres a lag of when the layoff happened versus when oewd actually gets information about it. Ok. Great. I think thats pretty much my question for right now. Commissioner yekutiel. Hi, edward. Where did you go . Did i lose you. Im still here. You see im trying to talk. And good to see you. I have two things. The first is on equity lens and thank you for acknowledging in your opening comments. One of the things that i think you acknowledged that i just want to oneonone with you on is as you know, if you look at seniority, folks who get the most senior roles and the most promotions are not women of color or women or folks of color or folks from equity communities or traditionally passed over communities. Often times white men are the folks getting the most senior position and this ordinance basically forcing businesses, small and medium sized businesses or folks with 100 employees to hire back in terms of seniority might have an unintended equity issue. Do you think that is actually the case . Whats your though thought on t . Im not as concerned about that because the way theyve defined seniority is based on the date of employment. Its not based on promotion tracks or things like that. Its based on how long have you worked for that employer. I absolutely dont deny that there are racially experienced and gendered experienced in the workforce. This doesnt seek to correct that for the entire workforce. Out of the scope of this ordinance and it does seek to do is say that if you were previously employed based on how long you are employed for, you should be hired before some other person who was never employed is hired. The other thing i say about this is the reason weve had it to seniority because its consistent with the way right to recall operates across every collective Bargaining Agreement we looked at and that is sort of the standard within labor of how you should approach recalling laid off workers. We were not comfortable and didnt see a good policy goal in trying to move away from that long established standards and. The right to return, the right to work happened is not something that i have much experience with but i have experiencing with hiring. I understand even with that definition of seniority, often times the first person that you hire get the most promotions and if theyre still around and they worked the longest, theyre likely to have the most promotions and experience and they stuck around, right. Im not saying it happens at my Small Business but theres a lot of businesses where you see implicit are explicit bias and who is able to get hired and stay there and get promoted. I dont know how this is done. Im worried about the seniority thing because it may mean that all the folks that at the top get the offer first and those who havent had that dont. The second thing is on the unemployment benefit. This is something that also as an employer, im understanding in real time, right, because ive had to let go of employees. Theyve left the city. And if im now forced to give them an offer that they reject, it might effect their ability to collect on unemployment which for a lot of folks is the only thing between them and going hungry. So, what is your response to that . This requirement that now we basically have to ask everyone to get that. Its seniority by object applications so theres the seniority is by the classification. Its by the position. And were beyond that. What does that mean exactly . What does it mean. Commissioner ball its your houseworker and someone else houseworker and gets promoted to being like a manager or Something Like that and you wouldnt be on the same seniority list and who gets the reemployment offer we depend on what position is being hired for. Something and i dont have numbers in