Labor Office Warns Budget Reductions Could Shrink Worker Outreach That Helps Recover Wages

Pat Mulligan, director of the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, briefed the Budget and Appropriation Committee on April 24 about OLSE’s work and budget pressures.

Mulligan said the office — established by unanimous board vote and now enforcing dozens of local labor policies — has recovered substantial sums for workers: “Since its inception, the office of labor standards enforcement has collected more than $150,000,000 on behalf of workers and in excess of 20,000,000 just last fiscal year,” he told the committee.

Asked about budget impacts, Mulligan described a budget direction to meet a 10% reduction in the next fiscal year, a further 10% the following year and a 5% contingency. He said the office had already identified limited internal reductions and that, absent other options, the principal available area for cuts would be its general services/service contract with the Workers' Rights Community Collaborative (WRCC). Mulligan and later testimony referenced a possible 50% reduction to that contract — an approximate figure the director associated with public reporting and city administrator conversations — and estimated that a half reduction would be about $750,000 in contract funding.

Community witnesses described what would be lost if outreach and multilingual education programs are reduced. Carl Kramer of the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition said the mayor’s proposed priorities “prioritizes policing, pro‑corporate policies, and fiscal austerity,” and called for preserving funding for community organizations that conduct in‑language outreach and wage‑theft claims. Multiple speakers from Chinese Progressive Association, Trabajadores Unidos/Workers United, Filipino Community Center and other WRCC partners recounted recovering stolen wages for workers, securing overtime and other remedies, and building trust that enables later enforcement actions.

Mulligan said OLSE is pursuing efficiency measures and additional revenue from enterprise departments but emphasized the difficulty of predicting impacts until the mayor’s formal budget submission: “Short of that, the only other areas for our office to make cuts would have been to our general service contract.”

What happens next: supervisors pressed for exact dollar figures and asked departments how proposed cuts would affect services. The committee requested clearer, itemized budget proposals before the June budget process so supervisors can assess trade‑offs and potential restorations.