County reports progress on residential care worker outreach; launches wage-theft dashboard and advisory council
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Summary
County Office of Labor Standards presented a second update on work to improve conditions at residential care facilities, citing creation of an RCF advisory council, multilingual listening sessions, a planned January 2026 informational postcard mailing to facilities, and a publicly available wage-theft judgment dashboard.
The Office of Labor Standards (OLC) and the Division of Equity and Social Justice told the Santa Clara County Finance & Government Operations Committee on Nov. 6 that they have advanced outreach, convening and enforcement strategies aimed at improving working conditions at residential care facilities (RCFs).
The office said it established an RCF advisory council in April 2025, received nine applications representing workers and advocates, and held the first meeting on Sept. 15. OLC staff described multilingual listening sessions — including a Tagalog session in June attended by more than 35 RCF workers — and said an owner-operator listening session was scheduled for Nov. 12.
OLC also described a tiered community-services model (broad direct engagement, targeted training, legal clinics and case-management representation), and reported FY2025 outputs: engagement with more than 10,000 workers, contact with about 900 businesses, training for over 1,300 workers and 400 businesses, nearly 900 advice-line calls and 29 legal clinics supporting about 150 clients. Staff pointed to two case examples in which advice-line attorneys helped secure increased severance and recovered approximately $7,800 in unpaid wages for individual workers.
The office announced a publicly available wage-theft judgment dashboard listing Labor Commissioner judgments across sectors and said it is creating a linguistically and culturally accessible postcard (to be mailed Jan. 2026) with worker-rights information for RCFs. OLC said the advisory council will reconvene in January to learn from the California Department of Social Services’ Community Care Licensing Division.
Committee response: Supervisors praised the volume of outreach and urged active publicity for the wage-theft dashboard and continued state-level advocacy to address structural issues. The committee voted to receive the report.
Provenance: The OLC presentation begins at 00:36:00 in the meeting transcript; staff metrics and dashboard discussion appear in the middle portion of the presentation.