Leading Practices

Vendors paid more than $25,000 per year by the city of Berkeley must comply with the Living Wage Ordinance. To comply, vendors must pay a living wage (set by the city), provide health benefits or cash in lieu and provide paid time off. Learn more about this and other vendor requirements, or read the full ordinance. Vendors must have a Berkley city business license. Effective July 1, 2022, vendors must pay employees $17.41 per hour plus a medical benefit equivalent to at least $2.89 per hour. If the employer does not provide the employee at least $2.89 per hour toward an employee medical benefits plan, the employer shall pay an hourly wage of not less than $20.30. Vendors must provide employees with at least 22 days off per year for sick leave, vacation or personal necessity; 12 of these days off must be compensated at the same wage as for a normal working day.

Since 2014, the California Workforce Development Board’s High Road Construction Careers project has allocated more than $20,000,000 to labor union and workforce development board partnerships to diversify and expand building and construction trade union membership. The project is expanding union approved pre-apprenticeships that use the Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) and includes a statewide database of the union validated programs. The initiative is funded by revenues through California Senate Bill 1: The Road Repair and Accountability Act, the Clean Energy Jobs Act Program and carbon market cap and trade revenues administered by the California Air Resources Board. Funds have been used to support local partnerships among workforce boards, unions, community colleges and other partners in East San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and Orange County and the Central Valley.

Los Angeles issued a living wage ordinance (LWO) along with rules and procedures for implementation of the ordinance. The ordinance defines requirements for sick leave, vacation and personal responsibility and establishes a minimum wage threshold. The LWO applies to contractors receiving city funds and ensures that employees working on city contracts are paid the city’s living wage (which consists of a cash wage rate and an employer’s health benefits contribution) and are provided with time off as required by the LWO (at least 96 compensated hours off and 80 uncompensated hours off). As of July 1, 2020, the city's minimum wage for employers with 26 or more employees increases to $15.00/hour for qualified employees in the city of Los Angeles.

Colorado established a statewide Office of Employee Ownership to increase the number of employee-owned companies in the state by administering a statewide tax credit (HB-21-1311) for employee-owned companies. It provides grants for feasibility studies and technical assistance to help owners sell to their employees and educates businesses about employee ownership through storytelling and building a network of employee-owned companies.

Firmenich, the world’s largest privately owned fragrance and taste company, achieved living wage certification across all of its global operations. Following an external assessment by Fair Wage Network, a widely recognized international nongovernmental organization, the group was awarded the certification. The firm is pairing living wage investments internally with training for 100 major suppliers on human rights to include living wage, women’s empowerment, education and human rights practices.

In 2021, Harris County established an Essential Workers Board to advise the county on programs and policies that support essential workers. All members must be “low-income essential workers,” with at least one worker representative from the airport or transportation, construction, domestic work or home care, education or child care, grocery, convenience or drug store, health care or public health, janitorial, food services, hospitality or leisure services, and retail industries. In addition to advising the county on its overall approach to protecting essential workers’ rights and providing a public forum, the board is also tasked with providing feedback on the county’s purchasing and contracting policies; workforce development programs; tax abatement and incentive policies; community benefits agreements; distribution of federal COVID-19 relief and recovery funds; disaster preparedness and recovery programs; OSHA trainings; independent monitoring of local, state, and federal public health and labor laws and inclusive economic development planning.

Founded in 1938, JVS has demonstrated new ways to diversify revenue for and through their job training programs, including charging employers for placement services. In 2018, the organization had $16M in revenue from a mix of private and public funding sources.

King County issued an ordinance and a Frequently Asked Questions Guide that outlines wage requirements and addresses repercussions for noncompliance. Contractors (and their subcontractors) awarded a contract valued $100,000 or more must pay a living wage to their employees. Wages are based on the company’s total number of employees. Companies that fail to pay living wages may be subject to (1) disqualification from bidding on a King County contract and (2) damages and termination of a contract. Living wage for a single individual in 2022 is $21.42 per hour.

The Maricopa Workforce Development Board partners with building and construction trade registered apprenticeship programs, including the Phoenix Painters and Allied Trades, the Southwest Carpenters Training Fund and the Laborers Training School. The workforce board provides $4,000 through Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) adult funds for related instruction and offers case management and supportive services to apprentices, generally in the first year of the apprenticeship program. In 2019, the US Department of Labor did a case study on Maricopa’s apprenticeship programs and found that WIOA Adult Program Apprenticeship participants had a 94% employment rate during the second quarter after program exit, 22 points higher than the statewide rate for the WIOA Adult Program.

Maryland implemented a living wage requirement for state service contracts and rolled out a detailed Frequently Asked Questions Guide that provides detailed guidance on how jurisdictions should incorporate living wage in their procurement processes to support their subrecipients, contractors and vendors. The policy states that, effective 12:01 a.m. on September 28, 2022, living wage rates will be adjusted to $15.13 per hour in tier 1 areas (Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties) and $11.36 in tier 2 areas (any county in the state not included in the tier 1 areas), depending on the location where the services are being performed or on the location benefiting from the work.

The Board of County Commissioners in Miami-Dade County established a Living Wage Ordinance for employees paid through county service contracts to allow citizens to support themselves and their families above the poverty line and with dignity. The living wage applies to contracts valued at greater than $100,000 and all service contractors at Miami-Dade Aviation Department facilities regardless of contract value for various covered services as defined in the provisions of Miami-Dade County's Living Wage Ordinances. Effective October 1, 2022, the living wage is $15.03 per hour with qualifying health benefits valued at least $3.70 per hour or $18.73 per hour.

The Living Wage Ordinance, which includes the Business Subsidy Act, requires covered projects to create at least one full-time living wage job for each $25,000 of business subsidy. State law contains many exemptions. The city places its own requirements on subsidies valued at $100,000 or more and with the intention, or end result, of creating or keeping jobs. Living wage rates effective January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022, are 130% of poverty for a family of four without health coverage provided by the employer and 110% of poverty for a family of four with health coverage provided by the employer.

New York City launched the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, a living wage law that includes wages and health benefits for workers. The law requires certain employers that receive at least $1 million of financial assistance from the city or a city economic development entity to pay no less than the living wage to their employees at the project site, unless the employer qualifies for certain exemptions. As of April 1, 2022, the living wage rate of $15.00 and health benefit supplement of $2.05 applies.

North Coast Small Business Development Center in Humboldt County, California, surveyed its small business clients about succession plans and used federal and state small business development center funding to provide education and advising on employee ownership as a succession and exit strategy to local business owners.

Worksystems Inc., serves as the workforce development board for the City of Portland and Multnomah and Washington Counties. The FY2021 budget projected $27,000,000 in revenue, $12,5000,000 from federal sources like the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and federal grants, $5,000,000 from state contracts including SNAP employment and training, and $9,500,000 in local government and philanthropic funds.

The San Diego Workforce Partnership’s FY2022 budget totaled $37,000,000 in revenue: $21,000,000 from Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I funds, $11,500,000 from grants and contracts from sources including TANF and community development block grants $1,500,000 in recurring revenues from a renewable learning fund and $3,500,000 from SNAP employment and training As the organization has increased its focus on job quality, its revenue has moved from 97% funded through WIOA Title I in FY2012 to 56% funded by federal WIOA funds in 2022 (see the attached budget document).

In 2020, the San Diego Workforce Partnership, the local workforce board, set aside $10,000,000 of funding over four years through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I youth funds to serve youth with the highest rates of youth disconnection, including Black youth, based on the results of local research and public input.

The Santa Clara County procurement department established a living wage ordinance for all county purchasing. Requirements specifically outline the rate of wages with or without health benefit and retirement benefit credits. The county’s living wage rates are updated annually based on specified cost of living adjustments. For FY2022/FY2023, the living wage is $22.96 with both benefits and retirement, $24.96 with either health or retirement and $26.96 without health or benefits.

The Texas Workforce Commission’s FY2022 operating budget projected revenues of $7,200,000,000 from administering the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, childcare, unemployment compensation, apprenticeship and state general funds, among other programs. These integrated funding streams, in addition to $183,000,000 in general fund investments, provide opportunities to launch job quality initiatives across multiple funding streams for Texas residents at different points in their employment and career paths.

In 2021, the Texas Workforce Commission issued a $1,500,000 Request for Applications to train “opportunity youth” (16- to 24-year-old youth not in school or work) to enter the building and construction trades industry. This procurement piloted evidence-based scoring incentives. Up to 10 bonus points (out of 100) were available for respondents who provided causal evidence of effectiveness that their program design could be a springboard to quality jobs for the target population.