APAs To Benefit Most From Living Wage, Study Finds
By Janet Dang

An independent study on the cost of a living-wage proposal for San Francisco has found that Asian and Pacific Islanders will benefit most of any ethnic minority if businesses with city contracts are forced to pay workers $11 per hour plus benefits.

According to the UC Berkeley study headed by economics professor Michael Reich, Asian and Pacific Islanders make up 30 percent of low-wage workers who would benefit from the ordinance, compared to 21 percent of Latinos and 11 percent of African Americans. Sixty-one percent of female workers would benefit from the living wage.

The study examines workers for city service contractors, including nonprofits, for-profit firms and home health-care workers, of whom a significant portion is Asian and Pacific Islander.

“Thirty percent is conservative,” Reich said. “Well over 30 percent of home health-care workers cited Mandarin, Tagalog and other non-English languages as a primary language.”

The study, sponsored by the Department of Industrial Relations at UC

Berkeley, estimates that some 13,200 low-wage workers would benefit from the law. If implemented, the living wage would the cost the city $32 million -- a high cost at the outset, but a good long-term investment, according to the study.

“Paying for a living wage in San Francisco would be like installing energy efficient windows in an apartment or home,” Reich said. “There’s some investment up front, but there’s an immediate and long-term saving.”

The study also examines a third sector of workers that the ordinance would cover: city employees on city property, including the airport and the port of San Francisco. Findings from this sector are expected to be released later. According to Reich, the workers of city service contractors and home health-care providers make up “virtually the cost to the city.”

The proposal’s sponsor, Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano, called for quick action, though other members of the board have opted to wait until the city’s officially sanctioned study, conducted by the Urban Institute at San Francisco State University, is released in September.

Last week, the board voted to give the city’s Living Wage Task Force up to 10 weeks to consider findings from that study. However, it is unlikely that the task force will be able to analyze the study and send a recommendation to the board before October, when most of the city’s service and lease contracts are up for renewal. The vote was passed 10-2, with Ammiano and Supervisor Leland Yee dissenting.

“At this point we don’t need to do this,” Yee said of the vote to give the task force an extension. “It’s important to study the ordinance. I don’t want to prematurely jump into it. But I don’t want to delay it unnecessarily either.”

Yee also noted that the living-wage law is particularly of concern for immigrant families. “We cannot continue to pay so low of a wage and have people work seven days a week, working two or three jobs. It’s unconscionable,” Yee said. “These are people who are raising kids and living in America. They should be able to spend more time with their family, but if they’re getting a poverty wage and must work long hours, that’s not going to happen.”

For Sui Yiu Liu, that’s exactly the case. Liu, 63, has been working as a home health provider for over eight years, and is currently paid $7 an hour to care for the elderly and disabled. “It’s non-stop work and very hard work,” she said. “There’s so many expenses and bills to pay. Many times, I don’t have time for my son,” who is in high school, Liu said.

According to Leon Chow, a representaitve for the Service Employee

International Union Local 250, Liu is among 25 percent of some 6650 home health-care providers who are of Chinese decent.

But with the ordinance in place, nonprofits that contract with the city may have to face an incredible burden, since few have the resources to pay workers $11 an hour. While Ammiano’s plan would raise city spending on those contracts to help offset the costs of higher wages, nonprofits are divided on the proposal. Many of them warn that they would have to cut back staffing or services if they are forced to pay a higher wage.

But Eric Mar, acting director for the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, disagrees. “That’s a bogus argument,” he said. “A living wage for nonprofits would increase our productivity, and service is better when we pay our workers better. There is a stronger stability when workers get paid a wage they need.”

Nonprofits also can apply for an exemption from the law, but the burden will be on them to prove economic hardship, whereby proponents of the law say would make some nonprofits uneasy.

For On Lok Senior Health Services, one of the myriad of APA nonprofits, Executive Director Jennie Chin Hansen recognizes the need to raise wages, but she remains cautious of the law’s fiscal implication.

“The impact is probably larger than most people realize,” she said. “We understand the need for this, but when you change a formula, there’s going to be a total ripple effect. Unless the flow of funding is there, it would be difficult for any organization to operate.”

The proposal has also set off alarms in the business community. Employers would be forced to provide health coverage as well as paid vacation and sick leave. One Asian American business owner who contracts with the city has expressed reluctance in renewing the contract when it expires in a few months if the law passes. He requested to remain anonymous because it would be “bad business” to talk about it.