During the pandemic, when thousands of Californians lost their jobs and found themselves in
need of the unemployment benefits they were due, the California Employment Development
Department (EDD) could not keep pace with the unprecedented surge of workers seeking
unemployment insurance claims. This left workers without their benefits for weeks or months at
a time, and navigating the website or getting through to EDD claims officers was nearly
impossible.
To call attention to this unacceptable treatment of workers, Supervisor Connie Chan passed a resolution urging Governor Gavin Newsom to overhaul and improve the usability of the EDD. While many industries are returning to pre-pandemic employment levels, we are still seeing layoffs in the tech industry, and the lack of jobs that offer living wages for wage workers, causing a continuing increase in unemployment. We must do more to support our workers.
To further protect our workers as new technology and laws take place, Supervisor Chan has introduced two new pieces of legislation. The first is an amendment to the Planning Code to regulate the use of autonomous vehicles in delivery services. As we increasingly see driverless vehicles on our streets, we need to ensure we have the tools to move us forward and still create good paying jobs while encouraging positive innovation here in San Francisco.
The second is an ordinance to make sure public dollars and contracts are awarded to companies that are good employers and have no outstanding labor violations. And those that have labor violations will face potential ban from doing business with the City. Our taxpayer dollars should not be spent on union busting, wage theft, or discrimination against working people.