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.

Founded in 1997, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) operates in 31 cities across 12 states. It has placed more than 34,000 individuals who were formerly incarcerated in full-time employment. The center is one of the only evidence-based employment programs dedicated to working with individuals who have recently returned home from incarceration. A randomized control trial by MDRC found that CEO reduced rates of recidivism by 22% and created $3.30 in social benefit for every $1 spent on the program. This case study in Philadelphia outlines how CEO partners with local government to make an impact on the ground.

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.

Cupcakin' Bake Shop is a Northern-California-based business with multiple locations. The company is committed to maintaining job quality as it grows. The owner offers her workers a living wage, career-building opportunities, wealth-building opportunities and a fair and engaging workplace. Cupcakin’ partnered with Pacific Community Ventures and their Good Jobs, Good Business program to implement job quality practices, including tracking and measuring changes over time, as well as to receive access to capital to scale operations efficiently and prepare the business for the future while supporting quality jobs.

In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provided a comprehensive overview with detailed examples of how local governments are protecting workers’ rights by establishing local labor standards offices to enforce workers’ rights laws, establishing worker boards and councils, passing local worker protections laws, setting job quality standards for contractors and internal employers and championing workers issues through local public leadership.

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.

Firebrand Bakery in Oakland, California, is a bakery owned by and for its employees through an employee ownership trust. Firebrand has 11 purposes baked into its corporate charter such as obligations to hire people who are formerly homeless or incarcerated, year-end profit sharing with all employees, creating a diverse and equitable supply chain and operating the company for long-term success rather than short-term profit.

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.

This national nonprofit works with childcare workers and owners to increase the number of employee-owned childcare businesses and cooperatives, such as the Rose Garden in Buffalo, New York. Workforce and economic development agencies can partner with groups like ICA to create more resiliency, equity and wealth building opportunities in the childcare industry, helping childcare businesses grow and expand to create more spots for working families.

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.

A 2013 Kentucky law established the Center for Education and Workforce Statistics, which collects and links high-quality actionable data from five state agencies in order to improve education and workforce programs in the state. By providing data sets, publishing reports and fulfilling research requests, the center provides state-specific insights with appropriate data privacy and data access measures.

In 2015, voters approved “Best Start for Kids” levies, with the most recent local measure generating $800,000,000 to expand access, affordability and quality of the region’s childcare system, including a childcare worker wage-increase demonstration project. The King County Department of Community and Human Services is leading implementation focused on increasing access and affordability for high-quality childcare for working families and for job quality for childcare workers.

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.

Pacific Gateway, the workforce development board in Long Beach, California, implemented a minimum wage requirement of $15 per hour in 2018 for all Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act on-the-job training contracts to ensure that participants were being placed on a pathway to economic mobility. Each year the hourly rate for on-the-job training is reviewed and approved by the board based on current economic conditions.

In 2021, Pacific Gateway, the local workforce development board, partnered in the development and implementation of a project labor agreement with the city of Long Beach (CA), local unions and private developers to fill local hire and other project labor agreements for public works projects. Pacific Gateway recruits and trains diverse applicants and refers them to the Los Angeles and Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) pre-apprenticeship program at Long Beach City College.

Through a partnership between the city and county workforce agencies and employment social enterprises, the Los Angeles Regional Initiative for Social Enterprise (LA RISE) began in 2015  to help people overcoming major employment barriers get jobs, stay employed and take initial steps toward living wages and higher quality jobs. Now in its seventh year, LA RISE has nearly 50 partners and has enrolled more than 4,100 individuals in Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs through its Client Referral Form, Client Flier, Program Model and Participant Flow Chart. The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund provides backbone management services to manage the network, track outcomes and build capacity for service provider partners.

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.