The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-09
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (13,077 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Labor and Workforce Development Committee met on Thursday, October 9th, with roll call confirming attendance of committee members and staff support from Council Operations and the Council Clerk's Office. The session opened with a statement of conduct and a tribute to a former state representative from East Portland who had recently died. Three agenda items were addressed: wage theft generally, wage theft in the construction industry, and wage theft among caregivers. Presentations described various forms of wage theft, including unpaid overtime, misclassification, tip theft, kickbacks, and payroll manipulation, along with data on complaint volumes at the state labor agency and disparities affecting women, Latino workers, and non-citizens; some figures describing complaint increases and dollar estimates were stated inconsistently. Construction industry representatives described specific project examples involving alleged underpayment, labor brokering, and check-cashing fees, and invited committee members to visit job sites. Caregiving industry presenters, including a caregiver who shared her personal account through an interpreter, described wage and retirement shortfalls, contract misclassification, and alleged retaliation. Discussion included potential policy responses such as a transparency ordinance, procurement standards, wage bonds, and referrals to the auditor's office. No vote outcomes were described in the transcript; the meeting concluded with plans for continued collaboration and photographs with attendees.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good afternoon everyone. I call this meeting of the labor and workforce development committee to order today. Today is Thursday, October 9th. And I am your committee chair, councilor Loretta Smith, representing district one. Vice chair Mitch Green is seated next to me. Craig is out today, so we are joined by christopher, her from counsel operations in keelan. Mcleod joins us from the council clerk's office. Keelan, could you please call the roll Green?
1 Here?
2 Dunphy. Here. Canal here. Novick here. Smith.
3 Here. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct, please?
4 Welcome to the meeting of labor and workforce development committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance. The committee agenda@ww.gov agenda. Labor and workforce development committee. Or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
5 I want to say to the clerk and to the body that I want to take a point of personal privilege and to acknowledge one of my colleagues and friends in east Portland who served in house district 48, and her name is representative hall. When she passed away yesterday of cancer somberly and representative when she was a wonderful soul, and she fought bravely against cancer. She was not only a natural supporter of business and labor, but she was a champion to many who will be deeply missed. But her kindness and spirit will always be remembered. I was too proud to to support her, proud to be a part of the east Portland delegation and honor her journey. My heart is rather heavy today and may you rest in peace whole. You will be missed but never forgotten. Thank you. Okay. Could you please read the first agenda item?
6 Item one wage theft and its harms.
7 Thank you. Keelan. Today we're joined by kate sussman from northwest workers. Could you come up from the just northwest workers justice project who will lead our initial discussion? Wage theft is a prominent problem in Oregon, but as we will learn later today, there are efforts underway to address the problem, including new state laws that will go into effect on January 1st. We will be discussing wage theft. Generally, it harms in some type of way workers who are most affected with an eye towards what we can do in the city of Portland to combat these problems, miss sussman, please introduce yourself and begin your presentation. Thank you so much for being here this this afternoon. This is this is important. And I want folks to know that wage theft is typically thought of as an employer withholding part of an employee's paycheck, but is that the only way that wage theft occurs? And you will also be talking about, are there other types of wage theft that we should be looking at? And if there are any other ways that we can close some of the gaps in the current legislation? I'm looking to do that with ordinances here on the city level, but I want you to go ahead and go forward and let me know your name and go right into your presentation.
8 Thank you, councilor Smith. My name is kate sussman. I'm with the northwest workers justice project. It's great to be with you all here today. And I've got a short, about ten minute presentation here. Happy to be interrupted. If anything is unclear or if you have questions. I thought I would just do a brief overview of my organization. Our mission is on the screen here and some photos of our recent work. We basically have three programs, one of which is legal representation. I'm an attorney. There's a group of seven attorneys who take on these types of cases. We also do worker leadership and development and education in the community, both for our clients and for the immigrant worker community at large. And we do legislative and policy work mostly at the state level. Like you just mentioned, councilor Smith, wage theft can take a lot of forms. This is a not comprehensive list, but some of the more common ones, the first and maybe most obvious is paying less than you've agreed to pay someone, whether that's less than minimum wage or less than another rate, you've agreed to. Not paying overtime is very common, and we see that a lot in construction and paying straight time. Your regular rate for overtime, paying less than the hours worked. I know that I worked 55 hours this week and you're paying me for 40 stealing tips. We see a lot in food service industry kickbacks, where you get your paycheck and you have to pay some of it back, requiring workers to show up early or stay late and not be clocked in for that time. Misclassification, which is a whole other presentation. I won't go down that road in detail, but we see that and folks are called independent contractors when they're employees. And the employer then doesn't have to pay workers comp or pay into unemployment or certain payroll taxes. And we also see that on job sites with prevailing wage or union jobs, where you should be paid at one classification and you're paid at a lower one. And then the last one I listed is payroll deductions, whether that's for tools or other necessary parts of your your job or some other kind of kickback. So this is a more national view about wage theft. And I'll go into Oregon in the next slide. But something that I think is a surprising fact is that wage theft actually costs more than all property theft combined in your average year. So this is from an economic policy institute report that I did link here. And I sent out these materials I believe as well. But on on the year that they studied wage theft looked like about $18 billion of wages unpaid versus property theft, which was around 15 billion in that year. And there are a few other stats on this slide from a recent article just showing how widespread wage theft is, where we're looking at 17% of all low wage workers losing an average of 20% of their income in a year, which is a huge amount if you're a low wage worker, you know, with not a lot of savings waiting for that next paycheck. And the result, the last bullet here is a lot of folks are pushed into poverty, can't pay their rent, can't pay their bills, which we see regularly. These are some nice little ai graphics about just showing you some of the industries where we tend to see at northwest workers justice project. And again, we focus on low wage jobs. Many of our clients are immigrants, so we see food processing and manufacturing farm work, not just cannabis, which is the picture there, but all types of farm work, including cannabis drivers, lyft and uber drivers who we believe are misclassified as independent contractors, janitorial, construction. And then the folks in the middle are just your average business owner who's not stealing folks wages. They're affected as well, because they have to compete against people who are stealing wages and who are not paying the taxes they should, and who are just generally being low road. These are some more national numbers. Just pointing out that certain industries like construction, transportation and warehousing are overrepresented of certain populations. So latino workers and construction, black workers in transportation and warehousing, and those are areas where we see more wage theft. And I just wanted to point out that folks that are not unionized and folks in low wage jobs often are more vulnerable because standing up and asking for those wages can be really risky. If you don't have a union and you need that next paycheck. Here's a chart that rutgers university on the east coast, they have taken some interest in Oregon, and they've been working very closely with our state labor agency. And this is a chart from 2010 to 2020 that kind of shows you that not everyone is as likely to suffer from wage theft, and I won't go through each part of the chart. But if you look around the middle, women are about one and a half times more likely than men, latino or hispanic. People are about two times as likely as white folks, and non-citizens are in many cases more likely than citizens. And that could be a visa worker. That could be a person with a Green card or an undocumented person. So if you're not a citizen, you're much more at risk. This is a little more information on what's happening in Oregon. Again, based on rutgers study of our situation. This is only minimum wage, which, as we said at the top, is just one of the ways that wage theft shows up. But the rates on the far left there are the highest violation rates. So private households, those would be domestic workers, including, I think home care workers would be in that category. Restaurants and bars, hotels or accommodation and then agriculture. This was what was found to have the highest violation rates on the far right. This data also showed that 18% of personal and home care aides have experienced minimum wage theft in Oregon. And that relates back to an issue that was here last week where I saw councilor Green with a home care worker who is alleging to be owed a very high, high number of wages. Again, I'll share all this with you. And I don't want to take more time than is allotted here. This is a sort of compounding issue that in Oregon folks have started to speak up more, which is great. You can see the historical data here from our partner, the Oregon center for public policy, of folks going to boley. And around 2022, boley put their complaint form online, which was great. Before that, we had to print it out, fill it out and mail it, but that resulted in a huge increase. As well as coming out of the pandemic, I think people were paying a lot of attention to their rights as workers. So this has all led to a pretty huge backlog at boley. This is a similar graph, but shows that boley had a 208% increase over the last four years in the number of claims, and they did not have a 208% increase in their budget. They did recently get a budget increase, which is excellent news, and you may have been following that. I'm sorry I'm stuck on this slide here, but at some point it'll go ahead. I think the next slide was just adding in a few factors that are compounding some of these issues. With boley having a backlog that isn't expected to be cleared for years at this point in the wage and hour side of things. So that means that folks, when they really need that, that wage theft to be addressed, they may have to wait one, 2 or 3 years. My screen is a bit frozen here, but I was just about at the end of my presentation. I do have some ideas for how the city council can can respond. I don't know if that would be helpful now, but I'd be glad to share a few of those ideas.
9 That would be great. Could you do that?
10 Yes, one. And I know we're in a budget crisis, so I'm trying to not focus on the things that might cost a ton of money. One would be the transparency ordinance that I think that the carpenters are going to speak about. I think procurement that the city, you know, we hold a lot of power when the city procures, and there are some things we're doing to kind of think about that power. But I think there's a lot more we could be doing with with procurement and construction's one area, janitorial consulting, really anywhere where the city is using that power, making sure that those are hired folks who don't have history of violations, who have good policies, who don't force workers to arbitrate, for example, is an issue I again, won't go into for time. But there are many nefarious things that employers do that we can make sure they're not doing on the city dime. And then I'll just mention briefly, a program that the county stood up before the pandemic, which had to do with deputizing community groups, including ours and others, to go out to job sites focused on construction, talk to workers, ask them, are you being paid properly, review payroll, things like that, and kind of make sure that that things are what they appear to be. So I will stop there. I have put this slide show in the record with some other materials, and happy to answer questions or to move on.
11 Thank you so much for your presentation. I know that our city code can't preempt state and federal law, but there are there are other limits on what ordinances at the city council can do. So I really appreciate you bringing up the procurement issue and the transparency, and not to redo what they're doing on the federal and the state law. But if there are some ways in which that people are getting walk arounds this, that, you know, just those small little gaps that we can help. I'm I am just trying to reconcile that. We're at almost 200% increase in complaints from 2019, from 1000 to over 4000 to date. That is just like alarming to me.
12 It is alarming and I would say it's not just boldly and this is more anecdotal, but my office and many other employment firms have said that since the pandemic, they're just all underwater. The number of people calling us has increased dramatically, and we're having to turn away, you know, nine out of ten or more of the folks who call us.
13 Thank you, counselor Green.
14 Thank you, madam chair, and thanks for speaking to us today. I'm really compelled by the chart that shows the wage theft claims. Can you pull that back up on the screen, please?
15 I will do my best. I think my computer is a little bit rickety, but nonprofit stuff. But I think we will get there. And was that the one with the boley numbers?
16 Yeah, it's this one right here. Thank you. So colleagues this strikes me so obviously this is terrible right. So it means one we need to be advocating for boley to get the resources it needs to respond to this. But it also shows like if you were to look at this chart and plot corporate net income taxes, tax revenues to the state of Oregon, it would follow that same trend if you were to plot capital gains tax. Revenue would follow that trend because the pandemic period was a period where the rich got very rich, but not everyone benefited, and the poorest, the most vulnerable of our workers not only didn't receive a share in the overall gains the economy during that time, but in fact, they were stolen from. So in some sense, we have an obligation to and I'm really encouraged by my colleague here to be hinting towards some appetite for for legislation at the local level, and I will be there to support that. But I'm very alarmed by this, and I really appreciate the chart. And I wonder, you know, thanks for offering some solutions and some potential areas to go. Can you share if there's been some other municipalities that have passed anything in this vein that we could look to?
17 Yes. I would say that there have been some great things done in other states. I don't love to mention california, but I'm going to mention them. There is a really cool program. I think it's santa clara county where they have like I was explaining the deputization program. They have that for other industries so advocates can go into a restaurant or any type of establishment with some fliers and say, representatives of the county. We want to make sure you know your rights and if you have issues, here's who to contact. For me, that would be so meaningful because we kind of know the types of establishments where they're not following all the rules, and wage theft is usually tied to others health and safety, discrimination and others. So if we could have folks that were, you know, that that type of core who could go out into the community, I think that would be amazing. Seattle again, sorry to mention a neighboring state, not Oregon, but they have the city of seattle has an incredible labor standards enforcement office. It's very well funded. They fund community groups to work with them, and they enforce local ordinances around wage theft. So those are two examples that, for me are quite impactful. Also might cost some money, especially the setting up a labor enforcement office like they did in seattle.
18 I appreciate the suggestions, and I'll just note that it's costing everyone a lot of money right now. When workers are stolen from. And I think like it's not lost on me, the relationship between what trump is doing in America right now to conduct a program of mass deportation and terror on on our immigrant community. And so colleagues being able to pass legislation that deputizes folks in the community who want to find ways to show up and stand up with them, seems like an opportunity we can help facilitate as legislators. So really appreciate these ideas. Thank you.
19 Hear hear hear. Councilor greene, I am with you. And and that's why I'm so glad that this man was here today to be able to explain, you know, what does wage theft look like? And oftentimes we we think that it's it's just a totally immigrant issue where people are going to get folks to fix things in their house. But this is obviously widespread. I want to thank you for the informative and interesting presentation we were hoping for. And you did that, and we appreciate you joining us today. And I appreciate you actually looking to work with us. I want before I totally end you, I want councilor Novick to to speak in and ask you some questions to.
20 Thank you, madam chair. I was just curious, how does a what does a wage bond look like? How does that work?
21 Well, we have such a bond through the state, the ccp, the construction contractors board, and it's something that workers can access if they are not paid properly. However, the one through the state is $3,000 total per project. So that means, you know, once in a great while, we do go after it because it may be our only option, but basically it's something that an employer pays ahead of time, like a bond. And you know, it's not used if it's not needed. But if it is, workers can be paid promptly that way. And right now, these cases, not just through boli but also through the courts, can take many years to access.
22 So can you just explain the procedure? How does the what what initiates accessing it and why? Why does it go quickly?
23 Well, there are different ways to set it up. And in Washington state they have a much better mechanism, I believe. But what we do here, in my experience, is really through the ccp, is you file a complaint with the ccp for construction. We could do this in other industries as well, but you would file your complaint with them. They would investigate it. They might be able to mediate it. If not, and the other side didn't want to pay through a mediation or find an agreement. The ccp could then access that bond.
24 Okay, so that's so the ccp can do that directly.
25 Yes, I do have some more research I've done on wage bonds, and I'd be I would love to share that with you. And I'm just so excited that this committee exists and that there's this interest in care.
26 Thank you. The other question, the sort of pollyanna question I wanted to ask is, is it possible that part of the increase in complaints to boli is a greater awareness that wage theft is a crime, and there are people you can call to help you, help you about it?
27 Well, I would like to think that there is growing awareness, and my organization and others like the carpenters, have been working to even popularize that phrase for for a long time. So I do think there is some of that. But I also think what councilor Green said is important, and what we see is that there are more and more employers who are happy to pay less and maybe get away with what they can on the backs of folks who, especially right now are are afraid to speak up. So I do think that it is probably increasing year over year. But I do also think what you said is true, that there is awareness, people are willing to speak up. And we certainly had a few good years there where workers were unionizing and recognizing they had power in their workplaces.
28 Thank you.
29 Councilor Kanal do you have any closing statements on this?
30 Yeah, I really appreciate this being brought up. Want to thank you for being here as well as the presentation. I want to shout out one of my bosses in seattle who still owes me about $700, just shy of that. So I have personal experience with that. And also the knowledge.
31 That that money.
32 Yeah, yeah, I'm okay now, but back then didn't have the money for small claims court. So to actually pursue that. And so I really appreciate this being brought up and having the having this conversation, the ep study that that was brought up in here, you know, makes a couple it has a lot of data and then extrapolates out and says that we could be looking at about $50 billion a year in aggregate wage theft. That's back in 2014. That's nationwide. And it's a really big issue that I think I would love to see us address. The same way we we care deeply about theft and addressing it in any other part of our society. So I'm looking forward to this continued conversation. I agree with councilor Green. I'm also very happy to hear about an interest in legislation. And, you know, if the ratio we're looking at here is something in the ballpark of 3 to 1, then I think we should probably be prioritizing it at that level of of importance as well. Thanks.
33 Ditto, ditto ditto because I think what we should be doing is using our influence as councilors, and our lived experiences should be able to help guide us into how we create policies and how we make the lives of the people who live in the city of Portland a whole lot better. So I thank you. I thank you, and I hope you would consider staying at the table. I'm going to call a couple more people up, and we're going to continue this conversation. We will dive a little bit deeper. So keelan, could you call the next agenda item please?
34 Item two wage theft in the construction industry.
35 Thank you. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into wage theft in the construction industry. As we've learned earlier, that there are a lot of gaps. And we're joined by travis simmons. Jesus sada, both longtime carpenters. Could you please join me at the at the dais, and we'd like you to introduce yourselves for the record, including which organizations you are currently representing. But I would also appreciate you telling us a bit more about yourselves, how long you've worked in the carpentry industry and trade, and any other personal tidbits that you'd like to share. As we have tried to use our lived experience to to make sure that we're we're creating policies that impact people down on the ground. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.
36 All right. Thank you, chair Smith, vice chair, Green city council. For the record, my name is travis simmons. I represent the western states regional council of carpenters. I have been a carpenter for 28 years. This year. When I first started, I knew about, you know, cash payments, but it only happened, you know, residential, you know, they would pay people, you know, go work on the weekends, you would get paid cash. But now we're seeing that this is evolved into the biggest projects in the state of Oregon. You can find cash payments. My colleague will speak about some of those projects a little bit later, a little bit more detail. I would like to follow up what kate had brought up about some of the different forms of wage theft that we see every day in the state of Oregon. You know, she also brought up the fact that seattle had good labor laws and california has really good labor laws. Oregon has become a compression zone. If you're going to cheat workers and make money, Oregon is the place to come. Currently. You know, with the recent passing of senate bill 426, we're hoping we're going to slow that down a little bit. We're hoping we can get a transparency ordinance in place. And neither one of them are silver bullet, but they will work in conjunction with each other and help out. But I will get on to the types of types of wage theft that we see every day.
37 I have a question for you. So do you think that we already have things on the books now, but do you think that this transparency ordinance that we could do from the city level might encourage the state to to do it statewide?
38 I would hope so. But I can't speak for the legislators.
39 Well, I mean, yeah. So the idea would be that we would want to make sure that it covers the city of Portland, which is a considerable amount of people who who do business in the city of Portland and one of the largest cities in Oregon. And I think oftentimes Multnomah county in the city of Portland, we can kind of give them a friendly nudge by putting these transparency ordinances into place. That would be helpful for a lot of folks.
40 That is our hope. That is our hope. We are actually taking a multi-pronged approach. We are hitting eugene at the same time. Great bend, and they're all taking a look at it currently. Thank you. All right. So kate had spoke about misclassification. I provided you with a couple examples of some certified payroll under example number one. That's a prime example of misclassification. I think I just wrote a number one on there. Those are carpenters working on a bridge project, full prevailing wage. And I just pulled some numbers off of bully's website. I didn't even realize or look to see if it was the correct year. But in this example, typically a carpenter makes $70.50 an hour. Excuse me, $71.50 an hour total package. That's with benefits and everything a laborer currently makes. 49. Excuse me, 59, 40 an hour. And what we see a lot is, you know, the unsophisticated contractors will classify everybody's labor because they save $12.10 an hour that they can put in their pocket. Now, they're not charging the job less. They're still charging the job the full amount. They're just saving $12.10. So that equals $484 a week per worker, you know, which doesn't seem like a whole lot to some people. But that's the difference between making rent, putting food on the table, keeping lights on. And because these workers are being misclassified, you know, sometimes they have to resort to our safety net programs. You know, like Multnomah county provides, the city provides to make ends meet. You know, it's not only lost revenue, but it's also a drain on, you know, all of our safety net programs that we do have. The other example, I do believe I labeled it number two is just falsification of certified payroll. So there's no real I mean, if you if you falsify certified payroll, there's no real threat, you know, bully so understaffed and underfunded that, you know, by the time they get to it, it becomes a cost of doing business. On that example I showed you right there, that's a school project. They have one carpenter that built that school on that on that week that that certified payroll represents. We had representatives that counted seven carpenters plus that carpenter that they put on there. So effectively those carpenters are being paid. God only knows it's not in record. We can't get certified payroll from them. We don't even know who they are. This was a third tier contractor that the general contractor was unaware of. So on that week, a certified payroll, you only see one entry for the week. Those other carpenters did not exist.
41 So what were they doing? They were paying them in cash. The other six workers. That's the.
42 On this example, I'm not 100% sure what they were doing. We didn't get, you know, by the time we got certified payroll, the project's done and we have no way to track them. I'm in the process of trying to figure out where where they are, who they are. I know the name of the contractor that supplemented the workforce, but I don't know any of the workers. Okay, so potentially they could have been paid in cash. That is a common practice even on prevailing wage jobs or housing at a much lower rate.
43 Yeah.
44 And then withholding wages, installing payments is really common, especially in the low income housing. You know, multifamily housing. The project starts off just fine. It may go for 2 or 3 months. Not an issue with payroll. Then all of a sudden they go to their workers and say, hey, the general contractor isn't paying me. We'll work this out. And so the workers continue to work the next week, same thing. Hey, they're not paying me. This may go on for a month, but then all of a sudden the employer brings them some money and says, hey, I mortgaged my house. I sold my truck, whatever story he's saying, and they'll give him a portion of the wages owed a very minimal portion of the wages owed. He said, hey, we'll sort this out. Let's let's finish this job out. The general contractor will pay me. And the vast majority of carpenters keep working for them. They believe that they're going to get paid eventually.
45 Right?
46 You know, and there are some that do leave, and those are the ones that reach out to us and let us know what's going on. And, you know, if we can help them, we help them fill out the paperwork for bully. If not, we point them towards jp. You know, that's very common, especially in the multifamily and low income housing. A lot of times these carpenters that are building the housing can't afford to live in it. No matter what the ami threshold is.
47 Right.
48 You guys are excuse me, not you guys, but we are creating the self-licking ice cream cone. Every time we build more affordable housing, we're creating the need for more affordable housing because these workers are not getting paid. The other time or the other way. Is overtime violations. A lot of times, even if they get paid properly, the correct wage on a check, overtime hours are usually paid in cash. It's been. I mean, I've even heard a company tell workers that, hey, we can't pay overtime on this job. We'll get in trouble by bully. But they put some money in the in the back of the envelope in cash. That's untracked. And it says straight time. And a lot of these workers, especially in the multifamily, are working. 610. So they're racking up a little bit overtime and they're getting paid at straight time wages. And that's if they're getting paid at all. But. The other one. So the last handout I gave you is a great article that was written in the Oregonian. That sort of will it's a little bit longer read. You know, I would read it at your leisure. Is the multi teering on a contract. We, we have a legitimate subcontractor that is awarded a project. But this project is too big for that subcontractor to to actually man. So he reaches out to something that's called a labor broker. And that labor broker may have five, ten workers. And so they hire the labor broker. But yet there's still not enough workforce. So that labor broker reaches out to his friend who's a labor broker, and he has another 10 or 12 workers. And it keeps working all the way down. Sometimes you see five layers of subcontracting under this, and each one of those labor brokers takes a cut from, you know, the the total dollar amount. And each layer down that the sub or the carpenter is gets a little less of the cut. Some of them are required to pay kickbacks. Excuse me. Because labor broker got him a job. Right now what we're hearing is kickbacks are 10 to 12% of their paycheck for the ability to work. Other times when you know, they'll they'll get paid in a check. But that check isn't written in their name, and they're directed to go to a specific check cashing location where they'll cash that check where they're again charged upwards of 30% because of that article that's sitting in front of you. Now, there's risk for cashing checks. So this worker, potentially 42% of his check, is being taken for the privilege to work in the state of Oregon. So. And excuse me, I lost my place in closing. You know, wage theft isn't just theft from a worker. It's theft from their family, our tax system and every other honest contractor that's trying to earn a living in the state of Oregon. I really I really suggest that, you know, we do what we can try to look at this transparency ordinance and try to fit it in. I don't know a lot of the legal stuff. I know they do it in other municipalities. I know seattle or excuse me, Salem enacted it for specific projects, but I think it's something we should look at to try to help the vulnerable workers in the state of Oregon. Thank you.
49 Thank you, mr. Simmons. And. I hate to put you on the spot like this, but surprise me with some local housing developers who we would not think. I don't want to get you in trouble, but I want somebody to surprise me with a name.
50 Of.
51 Somebody, of a developer, of a of a housing that is participating in this practice of wage theft. Think about it.
52 I will tell you. I will tell you off record,
53 Okay.
54 I will.
55 That's that. That's fair, that's fair. Thank you so much, mr. Simmons. And mr. Saada, could you please introduce yourself and let us know who you are, what, what you do, and give us a description of the problem that you see as it relates to wage theft?
56 Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon, chair Smith, vice chair, Green and council. My name is jesus sauceda. I'm an organizer for the western states carpenters union. I've been in the carpentry industry for about 15, 18 years, and along with councilor Kanal, they're a victim of wage theft myself. So it's real. Well, today I'm just here to share that wage theft really looks like in real life what's happening right now on job sites across our city. They're not stories from anywhere else. They're actually real, real life events that are happening here in in Portland. These projects were built with public and private dollars, and they show exactly why stronger enforcement is needed. An example of one of them, the julia west project at the julia west project, we found workers who are not receiving their full wages. The subcontractor they work for took a portion of those wages, money that should have gone towards health insurance and retirement, retirement benefits, excuse me. And instead used it to buy soccer tickets. To this day, those workers still haven't been paid in full and the benefits were never restored. The buckley luxury condos at at the buckley luxury condos projects, 20 wood framers were cheated out of their pay. One of them suffered a serious injury, losing a finger, and was forced to keep working with any time to recover or any kind of compensation for his injury. Lennar homes residential project on lennar homes residential project, a worker is still owed over $40,000. She was required by her subcontractor to pay expenses out of her own pocket and was never fully reimbursed, reimbursed on, or paid her wages in full. This worker came dangerously close to filing for bankruptcy just to survive, all because her employer decided that her paycheck was optional. These are just three examples of many, many job sites going on here in in Portland that are currently currently going on or have been completed that this stuff happens on, but they represent dozens of workers and millions of dollars being stolen across the across Portland. These are honest people trying to make a living building houses, housing schools and public spaces for all of us. And instead they're being exploited and robbed. Now, to all of you in the room, our elected officials, if you want to come see it firsthand, I invite you to come with us to these job sites. Give me a call. I'll show you what's happening firsthand. We go on these jobs, on these jobs, job sites. Excuse me. Boots on the ground. And we talk to these workers. I have done about 90% of the interviews in our office with these workers. And you'd be surprised some of the things that they that they some of the stories they have to share about wage theft and extortion, that's what I got. Thank you.
57 Thank you. That is just frightening that it is going on at the level that it's going on and how long it's been happening in, in our state of Oregon. And when you think about affordable housing, you think about closing a gap for a group of people who need affordable housing. But you don't stop to think that that this could be waged wage theft project. So I want to thank you. Similar to to what you talked about before, if if I were to introduce an ordinance to city council to help eliminate wage theft in Portland, to the extent that we could, what elements of policy do you think that we should recommend or that I should include in an ordinance? And either one of you can can answer that question.
58 Unfortunately, neither one of us are policy people, and we actually do have a policy person that I would gladly put you in touch with.
59 I would love to work with the carpenters and work with the community that is trying to so desperately eliminate this practice, to make sure that we can try to, you know, close some of those gaps, because what people are doing, they're taking food out of the mouths of families, and they're taking roofs over the head of people who are the most vulnerable, who are actually producing the housing. And that that is just not right. And so I would love to be able to follow back up with you and have my staff contact you to figure out how we can actually make a difference in this, because this is this is real. I started with wage theft issues when I was a counselor commissioner at Multnomah county, and I was just learning at the tip. This was in 2018 and we were like, had that dip in 2019. And to see that it has risen to the degree that it has, just in terms of the small, boley claims. So I think this is important, and we're going to stay on it until we can try to eliminate this and make sure that people are getting the wages and the salaries and not being downgraded, in which whether they be a journeyman or a apprentice, that they're getting paid correctly. Councilor Smith councilor Green helped me out here.
60 Thank you counselor, although, you know, I can't live up to you, so you get to keep your name.
61 Yeah.
62 Echo everything you just said you preached just now. But I just wanted to say I would love to take you up on your offer to come to a job site. My chief of staff, maria, is over here. Sitting there. We would love to connect with you and get some information and coordinate that, because I think when you get your elected leaders who show up to these kind of places, that has a chilling effect on the behavior of the people who are exploiting these workers. And that's, you know, while we're going to do some legislation, it sounds like perhaps we can do we can do that too.
63 That sounds great. Thank you very much.
64 Thank you, counselor Green councilor Canal.
65 Sam, I'd love to go on on a tour as well. I don't know if my staff's in the room, but I can always bother maria to.
66 But it looks.
67 Like you have a trifecta of the members of the the labor and workforce committee. We got to talk to robert to see if all of us can actually go on that trip together, because we would have quorum, and we are actually talking about putting a ordinance together. So we need to figure out how we do that in and not go to budget jail. Councilor Dunphy, would you like to ask a question on this?
68 I mean, no, this is horrifying. But also, I also want to go on a field trip. That sounds great. I'd love to see this, however that works out. But thank you guys for coming in testifying today.
69 I want to thank both of you for joining us today. Having you provide such an authentic and sincere explanation of wage theft and your firsthand experiences. It really brings the problem into focus in a finer point. It is something that we see every day and we don't even know that it's happening. It's an invisible kind of crime. And I think we need to do whatever we can do in the city of Portland and through our own policies to make sure that people are getting paid what they're supposed to be getting paid, and that if we don't, that there are consequences. So thank you so much. I'm going to call up the next agenda item. If you have any other last words to say, you can say it now, but if not, I want to thank all three of you for coming.
70 Thank you, thank you, thank you.
71 Could you bring forward the agenda item three.
72 Wage theft and caregiving.
73 Thank you. We will now move into a discussion about wage theft and health care, particularly among caregivers. Councilor Dunphy, would you like to introduce our guests? And I believe you and councilor Green both may have some initial comments, as well as co-sponsors of this presentation to get us started.
74 Okay.
75 Good afternoon. Thank you.
76 Yeah, I just I just want to start by saying thank you for coming back. I know it takes a lot to take time out of your working day and and really putting yourself out there to, for the struggle for not just you, but for everyone. This is really timely and it connects well with the first presentation because there was a slide that showed how wage theft is racialized and gendered. Because if you are latinx woman, your 3.1 times more likely to to have your wages stolen than than a white man, basically. And it takes a lot of courage to engage in this struggle in this way. And I just from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for that courage. And thank you, chair, for letting us have this today.
77 Yeah. I'll just add that I think this is really important for us to be talking about this right now, especially with what is going on with the sort of terror that is happening in our community around immigration. I worry that the actions by the federal government towards people who are born elsewhere is going to have an effect on employers and could potentially encourage more bad behavior. So I will introduce our three speakers here. We have freddy mizzi. I'm sorry in advance if I screw up your last name community organizer with Portland, we have tita maria, our caregiver and community organizer and doctor eileen doula, please help me.
78 You're on your own. Yes, yes.
79 Who is a a public health researcher, scientist and epidemiologist?
80 Yes. Thank you so much.
81 Thank you, and I apologize.
82 That's okay. So we do have slides that we're presenting. How does how is that going to work. They're actually uploaded into the.
83 Yeah we'll share our stories first and then we'll put up the slides in a little bit. But yeah if we could get.
84 Yes okay. Great. So thank you everyone for giving us the opportunity to speak with you today. Special thanks to councilors Dunphy Avalos and green's office and to also to maria cbo for working directly with us. We'll be speaking today on wage theft among caregivers. My name is doctor aileen duldulao, a public health research scientist and epidemiologist. I'm here with tita maria, caregiver and community organizer, and freddy musa, a community organizer. We all belong to the filipino migrant community here in Portland. So we will first hear stories about caregiving experiences from tita maria and freddy, and then move on to some research and data. So and freddy.
85 So what we'll do is have tita maria share her story directly. I will have to interpret. So long story. Yeah.
86 Good morning for. Astoria. 14 years to. Wheelchair adult foster home and lim na 14 years na mababang. Alam kung tama yun talaga ako kung pinag aralen indico alam ngayon ang nag nag. Sa mga gaya sa akin mababang sahod nalaman na mga mga migrant silang nag nag ako na mg. Nag nag nag nag laban and akin trabaho. Kung kung ano ang ang tamang sa akin nang nicoya original gusto na naman matulungan ako. Kaya nag dito para kung matulungan. And ibalik yung tamang sa akin.
87 Dagdag.
88 Trabaho ko, nag nag lahat ng ako, nag nag nag nag ano sa mga ang akin resident ako lang nag nag nag nag nag nag ng mga resident. Ko naman ako nila, tulungan silang around the world. Doon. Nag nag nag ako sa inyo na kung matulungan ako bigay yung ibang na hindi niya. Sapat kulang din ang inaasahan ng mga kung sa pilipinas. Thank you. Thank you.
89 Thank you.
90 So tita said good morning to all. I worked for 14 years at wellcare adult foster home owned by dori and Jamie lim. I didn't know that my wages were low. Well, one because I didn't go to school. When I learned that there were people like migrant who were helping out, I found the courage to fight for my wages back that I deserve. I would like your help. That's why I'm here today. I cared for five residents, did everything I cleaned, cooked, showered, gave medications. One of them also, I helped with hoyer lift. I was there alone. Often times my boss were always traveling around the world. And so yeah, I'm here again to ask for your help to get my wages back. And really, because this is for my grandchildren, that's in the philippines. Yeah, she's the breadwinner for her grandchildren. Just to add to that, salama tita, just to add to that, just some additional things in our findings is that she was in her pay stub. She was a salaried employer is what the pay stub has shown. And so the impact of that is it kind of the boss were able to get around with that by making it seem like she was a salaried employee and not an hourly employer, which means she couldn't pay, wouldn't get overtime pay and all that. The other thing is, she's at retirement age. And so when we went to go to help her out, to get her retirement because of what in the records of years of working, it shows us if she didn't work that much and therefore she actually can't get what she deserved for retirement. And so, yeah, the other thing is tita doesn't really read english or write. She only finished fourth grade and so she read minimally in tagalog and and was actually shown a contract that she ended up signing, not really realizing that it said she was supposed to work as a housekeeper, but really all the things she she did, and also asking some of her coworkers and other witnesses have shared that she's done a lot of, like, caregiving in that housekeeping responsibilities. And in that contract to it was written that she would get 2500 a month, but never in any of the pay stubs that she kept on record upon careful review. None of it showed that amount. And so that's an example. Additional caregivers in the area. I'm sharing their stories are we have someone I'm calling today at this who's a caregiver in in Beaverton, actually. And she was employed for a month or two at a memory care facility and never received her paychecks, totaling up to $2,000 for one month. She quit and filed a claim with the state labor board with the help of her sister. And that was like in 2020 4th December and still today hasn't received it. Another story I'm naming today at a. She was also being underpaid at another care home in Portland, where she worked, and she got help from a friend in calculating her paychecks, and it was obviously not accurate. And when she raised it to the management, they retaliated against her and fired her. So these are just additional stories that we were able to gather. But knowing that there's more people who are experiencing this and are fearful of, you know, standing up because one, they don't really know their rights, and then two, because of the fear of retaliation, because of like potentially losing their jobs, especially for filipino caregivers who rely so much on them, even little income that they get. Because, again, we have families that were also trying to ensure they have food on their table or when floods and like calamities in the philippines hit like like the the families who are working overseas are the ones also needing to provide for them. So those are just additional couple examples in Portland. And then lastly. You know, this is also a bigger issue. Caregivers across the country actually in under migrant usa, we've been learning about many other wage theft in the caregiving industry in southern california, northern california, northeast, similarly facing the same, not being compensated for working nights for working more than the responsibility that they are supposed to do and adding more tasks to them, and even to the point where people are getting paychecks that are going bounced. So those are additional things that we are also seeing across the country. And so just to close it off, you know, with with community organizing and really educational with, with the caregivers and workers themselves, they are finding the courage to raise their voices, like tita maria, to get their stories heard and to really fight for what is just and right for them. And so from the east coast to the west coast and in Oregon, Portland, you know, filipino caregivers along with migrant are coming together to fight until justice is really served. So that's my brief sharing their. Oh, and then sorry, just an additional thing, you know, when when caregivers do find the courage to fight and they're out there really getting their stories heard like tita maria when we started making all of her stories in public since April of this year, her former employer, actually. What is that called? Threatened or retaliated? Threatened to get her deported if she doesn't stop. Yeah, yeah, stop. Like making noise or stop sharing the the the story.
91 Yeah. She was threatened with deportation if she doesn't be quiet. Yeah.
92 Wow.
93 And that's a real threat, especially in this particular context.
94 And you know, that's where like we have to also then additional we do have as migrants also have the right to, you know, to fight for the truth, you know.
95 Exactly.
96 So yeah, that's kind of like the story side. And then I'll pass it to doctor eileen here, who would share more on like the data and more additional councilor.
97 I have a quick question.
98 I want to go back to what you said earlier. You said that she was supposed to be getting a check for $2,500. And just curious, what was she getting in cash?
99 She she received that pay stubs. By cash or check. Yeah. So she did she did receive checks. But in the checks there were moments of just like 485 or at the most within like a month. It's like a thousand.
100 So she was she was expecting $2,500, and she only got about a thousand.
101 Yeah, at the most.
102 At the most.
103 And when we even looked through her pay stub, there was a lot of violations. And we checked in with an attorney about it to confirm. And, yeah, it was like missing a lot of, like, things that's supposed to be in a pay stub.
104 Like the fica information.
105 Right?
106 Yeah. Deductions of things like, oh. It's kind of wacky.
107 Yeah. Thank you so much, doctor dee. I'm not going to try to pronounce your name.
108 All good, all good. Go ahead, I got it. I totally get it. So moving to the slides. This is just a list of questions that we were asked to maybe address in our in our presentation. Go to the next slide. So we did our best to attempt to address this information. So wage theft is a widespread issue in industries in occupations where immigrant workers are concentrated like caregiving, the garment industry and domestic work. And there's actually a lot of parallels with the construction industry. These workers often face multiple vulnerabilities, limited english speaking proficiency, undocumented status, low income and lower education levels. These factors not only increase their risk of exploitation, but also make it harder for them to report violations. As we see in maria's case, it took her 1415 years to even get assistance, to even even know that something wrong was happening, let alone be able to report what was happening to any kind of authority. As a result, wage staff is underreported and the data we have is likely under-represents the true scale of the the problem, especially here in Oregon. Next slide. And we know that. Oh I'm sorry. Next slide. Women of color are disproportionately affected by wage theft in the care industry. A 2021 u.s. Department of labor initiative found violations in 80% of investigations in the sector. Nearly 25,000 workers, mostly filipina, black, hispanic and asian women were impacted, with over $28 million in recovered wages. Common violations included unpaid overtime below minimum wage pay, and misclassification as independent contractors or like we saw in the case of maria being classified as a housekeeper, but doing direct patient care, which is a type of misclassification which basically denies workers basic protections. And next slide. So immigrants make up to almost a third of the long term care workforce in the united states. Yet we lack specific data on wage theft among this group at the local and state level. So it's really hard to find city, county, state level information about this phenomenon. However, we do know that immigrant workers in Oregon are more vulnerable to wage theft than their egos born in canal boards. And so we we kind of heard a bit of this in the last presentation from the construction workers. In fact, what we see is the difference by race, gender and citizenship status. So you're correct in what you observe councilor Green with the race and gender. But we want to add this also dimension of citizenship, citizenship status as well. This very top bar reflects that latino women who are non-citizens are 3.7 times more likely to be paid less than minimum wage than white males who are citizens, and this is in Oregon. And this highlights that wage gap is intersectional and highlights inequities in gender, race and citizenship status. And it also highlights the need for more targeted data collection policy interventions to protect immigrant workers, especially immigrant caregivers and other sort of industries that that really face a lot of wage theft, including construction. Next slide. So in Oregon, wage theft is a really significant issue, as we heard in the last presentations, between 88,000 and 128,000 workers are underpaid each year. And that's about 4% to 6% of the workforce in Oregon. This results in an estimated 283 to $405 million in lost wages annually, just from minimum wage lost in minimum wage violations alone, and enforcement is limited due to capacity issues at boley, which may change with the recent legislation that was passed. And they've implemented an income cap only investigating cases under 250% of the poverty line, which is led to the automatic dismissal of 17% of cases. This policy unintentionally excludes many low wage workers, who all still face serious violations. So I'm not I'm not a labor and workforce researcher. I'm a public health researcher. But what I found is that the the issue isn't necessarily that Oregon has doesn't have strong policy. We don't have strong enforcement of our policy. So we have good policy, right? We just don't have very good enforcement. And that, that that in fact, is an issue of capacity at boley. I know that we tried to go to boley with tita maria's case. We really didn't get anywhere due to these capacity issues happening at boley, and since then we've had, you know, other workers who had wage theft issues, not just in caregiving but other industries. And we we just know that, you know, if we do go to boley and try to file a case, it's just not going to go anywhere. We also tried to go to the the us department of labor, and that also didn't really we we made calls, sent emails that really didn't go anywhere. There's also different barriers as to, you know, the size of the the care home and things like that. That just didn't make reporting at the federal level possible as well. So that's why we've been waging this kind of grassroots campaign, this people powered campaign, because we know that the people have the power. Right. And so that's why we're here. So thank you so much. We're open to questions. Thank you.
109 I'm going to go to my colleagues councilor Novick.
110 Yeah. The examples you gave were about care homes. I was wondering about home care for individual families or those situations like is it the home care commission is making the payments with medicaid dollars. So there's not as much there's not really such a risk of wage theft or there's is there wage theft in home care as well?
111 There probably is. I think that when you, you know, the more like the small, the the more intimate the setting is what I found, the more intimate the setting, the more likelihood that you will find abuse. So especially with domestic workers, people that work as housekeepers, as as maids, as like in, in childcare, you will have really high, high levels of, of wage theft because also those, those types of industries are also really dominated by immigrants, by women, right, by people that are also people of color. And so anytime you have that intersection of, of people, of color, of women, of immigrants, you will find a lot of abuse when it comes to labor abuses. But you will also find a lack of data, right? Because because of those intersecting identities, and especially now because people are afraid of being deported or losing their jobs, right, of retaliation, they're very unlikely to report. And then you combine that with agencies that are very likely unlikely to file a report or be, you know, be available to pick up that phone and talk to the person you just end up with. A lot of you end up with 14 to 15 years of people having to suffer these kinds of abuses and not, you know, literally not getting paid. And like what you were saying, this is like, this is food being stolen from people. This is like housing being stolen. It's not just for it's like it goes down like it's for her family. It goes down generations too. Thank you. Thanks.
112 Doctor. D, I just want to go back. Is tina working right now? Not working.
113 Not right now.
114 Okay. I'm going to ask you a similar question that I asked the two earlier panels if I were to draft an ordinance addressing wage theft in Portland and wage theft among caregivers, particularly, what policy elements should I include in that ordinance? And would you be willing to help us to gather the information to to create such a vehicle?
115 Policy?
116 Yes, because one of the things that I that I wrote down, that was key, you said it's not the issue of whether or not the policies are there, whether or not there's capacity to enforce it. And so I want to make sure that that there is an enforcement mechanism inside of any ordinance that I do. And I would love to have your help and assistance as we're, you know, drafting this, to be able to look at and see if it's something that that you could support.
117 I mean, I have to like, understand more about how like california have done it, for example, but like the like bill of rights in the caregiving industry that really does like really enforce that.
118 So they have a caregiver bill of rights.
119 In really enforce like the like more regulation in the caregiving industry. I have to do more research. Okay. Something along those lines.
120 And I and you don't have to get that deep. I think what I'm looking for is once we draft something, if I could call you on the phone and send you an email and say, is this something that that you think that would be helpful? Because I only want to do something that you all think would would help to one eliminate wage theft and two, to have the teeth in an ordinance that would enforce it.
121 Hum hum. Yeah.
122 And you don't have to be a policy maker.
123 I'm, I'm totally down for that. And I think that like, I think especially because we've gone to multiple, you know, agencies and have not been successful in getting redress. And I think having that especially, I think especially if there's a way to address the retaliation, the fear of retaliation that we've experienced, that would be really, I think, helpful in having more folks, you know, come forward. And yeah, like, you know, and I, you know, I also sense that among the folks from the construction industry to like, there's a fear of coming forward. Yeah. You know, with what's happening and if there's a way to address that, that would be, you know.
124 I understand councilor Green, you have a couple questions.
125 Yeah. I just want to riff off of what you're kind of laying down here. Councilor I would love to see us kind of iterate back and forth in a dialog. So like when you bring forward your drafts, it'd be great to have that kind of question about the pieces of the legislation here with whoever wants to come and participate in that and help us generate that data from the community. Doctor duldulao.
126 Yes, correct.
127 Doctor duldulao. Yes.
128 Thank you.
129 You had mentioned that we lack some sort of granular detail at the local level. And so maybe this process helps us generate that a little bit. And also in my in arts and economy, we had started providing this kind of work session style space a little bit to have an informal discussion about the creation of it in the open. So that way we're not violating public meetings law, but still advancing forward on legislation that we think has teeth. So I'd be very favorable to that type of format.
130 Yeah. And I think also really grounding it in the experiences of the folks that are experiencing this, like really grounding it in the people experiencing wage theft and grounding it in the construction workers experience, like grounding it in maria's experience, it like really making it very community led and community grounded, I think would be really helpful. Yeah.
131 That is the only way to do policy. And you have talked to agencies who are in charge of enforcement. They weren't policy makers and we're policy makers. That's what we do. And so I like nothing better than to ground it in community to make sure that we're getting the best piece of policy and that you'll come out and talk about it. Councilor Dunphy, could you ask your question?
132 Thank you. Yeah. You know, sort of building on what both of you have just said, I'm reflecting back on the earliest presentation here about deputizing individuals to enforce. I mean, you know, if we have great state law and nobody to enforce it, it's not the same. It doesn't matter. And I've also noticed, certainly that that the city of Portland, historically, if they care something, care about something, they call it out by its name and they hire somebody to care about that thing. And I know we are in a budget. Crisis, and it is hard to be able to imagine hiring new employees. But I do wonder if there just might be some way within our existing bureaucratic systems to have additional capacity or to to enforce state law, or to at least help navigate that. I don't even, you know, I know that the issue is so much bigger that the city would never be able to hire enough people to actually handle that. But I do want, you know, wonder if there might be something we can do.
133 I think you correct. I mean, once we get complaints, right, because we have a whole auditor's office that is designed to investigate complaints and that's what they do. And we can actually refer some of this to the auditor's office. And if we want a, a, a wage theft coordinator, that's something that we can put in the, in the budget.
134 And I also wonder if there might also be an opportunity for either deputizing, a nonprofit with a private right of. What's the term their their ability to sue on behalf of private right of action. Thank you. Can't find words today. Private right of action involving the private community or private sector or finding ways to that won't simply rely on on diminishing public budgets and public bureaucracy. So I'm really open. I would love to be. I hope this committee will take some time to to explore some interesting options and maybe do some creative problem solving around this.
135 Please can I add one more thing? Sorry. I think an additional thing to engage, particularly in the filipino business owned care facilities because yeah, tita maria's employers are filipinos and there is a filipino American chamber of commerce. Paco. That I think. Would be a place where, you know, the councilors, the labor committee could also engage with and further have this kind of discussion because it is these like small business owners, owners that that are the ones supposed to be also upholding the rights of the workers and are not. And so I think it's another place to have these kind of conversation. I think. So, yeah, that would be something a particular like great thing to do, you know, for tita's case, to show an example of how, yeah. Thank you. Level of government can work with other organizations.
136 That's a good.
137 I like that idea. Yeah. Writing that down. Councilor canal.
138 Thank you, madam chair. Thank you all for being here for maria. Doctor, I really appreciate all the information you give, and both in terms of the initial presentation and the responses to questions I did want to highlight, I think it's really notable to point out that tita maria's employers are filipino. Right? So there's it's an important thing that whatever we do, we're going to need to have staff that can master multiple different cultural contexts in order to to engage with not only folks who might be victims of this and are dealing with it, but also the folks who may be doing it. So that's a really important thing to to kind of keep in mind. And I don't know that the city has a historic pattern of being good at that. No. As someone who worked in community engagement for the city for three years, I do know that we don't have a good track record of doing that citywide. There are some places that are significantly better than others. I also know that we need to. I'm not 100% sure where this authority lives, but there is authority for the auditor to decline or accept taking on new work. So we're going to need to have that conversation with, with that office and, and figure out where they think their role is. But I do think that that one of the in addition to the issue with ensuring that there's enough support for the community engagement side and a strong engagement approach at the city, which I am very concerned about the direction that things have been going in the budget on that. I also am very concerned about the direction that the budget's been going as it relates to the office of equity and human rights, which I think is going to be a big part of at least the know your rights elements that we're talking about here, making sure that folks understand what their their rights are and what their whatever avenue of recourse we create are. So while I do think that we might have been more suited to do what councilor Dunphy suggested, which is incorporate this into our existing resources prior to June, when we cut over again. But I don't know that there's enough capacity to take on anything new right now in that agency without new money, because of what we saw, proposed, and then enacted as it relates to oer.
139 So how we move around money councilor.
140 Yes.
141 So I just want to.
142 Yeah, I don't mean new money in terms of new revenue. Right. New allocation to oer.
143 But let me tell you this. Anyone can call the auditor's office and make a claim, particularly for a contractor that is procuring. Yes through us. Yes. And say I believe there's some wage theft that is that is not negotiable. You can call the auditor and ask them to look into it. And so to that part, I think that we have an ability to do that. And I think, you know, there are ways to move things around. And as we will see coming up in our next tile, we'll see what our beginning balance is going to be. So don't don't throw out the baby in the bathwater at the same time, because I think there, there, there, there are opportunities for us to to make sure that we, you know, you get what you you get and we have to make it make sense. And they made it make sense to me today on the construction front, on the affordable housing and the caretaking and what our housing or affordable housing developers are doing. I'm really upset about this. I want to go on that tour. I want to make sure that we craft a piece of legislation that helps people immediately. And where there is a will, there is a way, and I'm committed to it. Councilor canal.
144 Yeah, I appreciate that clarification on what is already enabled with the the auditor's office, the ombudsman and all that, that whole process. So I think for we may need to act in terms of those that we are not directly paying city dollars to already through a contract to see existing sort of separate private sector situations. And I would love to be a part of that with with all of you.
145 Thank you.
146 Thank you. Councilor Novick.
147 I just wanted to say this has been one of the best committee meetings I've been in in the past nine months, so I want to thank everybody who testified. One thing I wanted to mention that I thought was really compelling was the data showing that wage theft exceeds property crime, theft in terms of value, that should make people look up and take notice. So thank you and chair Smith for putting this together. And I also have to say I'd like to thank councilor Green for using the phrase, I want to riff off of what you're laying down. Now. I think that that language went out of vogue before he was born. Maybe councilor Smith is still younger than me. Can remember when people used to talk that way, but it took me back in 1969.
148 No, it wasn't my language, but I understand. I understand some of these phrases that came before me. I am a student of history, but. I just want to thank all of you for coming today. And miss maria, I know you've been featured in a few news stories locally in street roots, but also some national coverage, and I imagine that it's been quite the experience for you. And I like councilor Novick this, this has really gotten my blood moving about this, taking stuff from the most vulnerable people in our community. It makes me mad. And so I want to do something about this. It's tough being in the public eye sometimes, and but I hope that these stories and the stories that we know about from others, that we can highlight them and we can do something about it in real time. And I think time has been not on our side because by by the time that you cycle through getting someone to investigate, they've moved on to another project. And this whole idea about these labor consultants, I was just floored that there's like five levels of labor consultants. It's ridiculous and it's out of control. So there are some new sheriff in town, some new chairs in town, and vice chairs. And this is this is really it has me excited about doing something about it because it really changes the lives of people who who are coming here, who have a language barrier, who are wanting to do the right thing and to work. And the people here are not allowing them to do that. And that's where we come in and close the gap. Councilor canal councilor Dunphy councilor Greene, thank you so much for your contribution to today's agenda. I appreciate it. If there are any other questions. Councilor Kanal you have another question that is a legacy hand. If there are no discussions, we will adjourn the meeting and we'd like to get some pictures with you afterwards. Thank you so much.
149 Thank you.