Homeless housing operator will pay $330K in wage case
Tenderloin Housing Clinic, one of San Francisco’s largest supportive housing operators, will pay $330,000 to settle claims by employees of alleged wage theft.
The nonprofit last month agreed to settle a 2020 class action lawsuit that, in part, accused it of using a “system of time rounding” that failed to accurately compensate employees for all their time worked. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of more than 100 employees, also alleged the nonprofit failed to provide legally required meal and rest breaks.
The settlement is part of a larger reckoning over labor tensions and work conditions at some of the hundreds of nonprofit organizations that San Francisco relies on to provide vital services to its most vulnerable residents. The nonprofit employees have long argued they are underpaid, overworked and often forced to navigate difficult, and sometimes unsafe, situations. Many don’t have the same union protections as city workers.
Workers at two prominent homeless and low-income nonprofits, the Glide Foundation and Compass Family Services, have tried to form unions in recent years. Employees of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which is unionized, in 2022 held a protest to decry the nonprofit’s low pay scale and dangerous working conditions.
Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, declined to comment and referred a reporter to the organization’s attorneys, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The attorneys representing the current and former nonprofit employees also did not return requests for comment.
Tenderloin Housing Clinic is not the only nonprofit receiving city funds to be accused of wage theft in recent years.
Employees of Larkin Street Youth Services, which operates an emergency shelter for older youths, sued the nonprofit late last year for allegedly failing to pay workers for accrued sick time and provide all legally required meal and rest breaks. The nonprofit argues the claims are unsubstantiated.
The city began an investigation into the Providence Foundation of San Francisco, which operates city shelters and other homeless services, for allegedly depriving workers of holiday pay and failing to pay them accurately for time worked. And the Coalition on Homelessness, a homeless advocacy group in San Francisco, earlier this month was hit with a lawsuit over its own alleged labor law violations.