San Francisco Now Requires Prevailing Wage for Contracted Street Cleaners

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday, September 22, to require private contractors that clean the city’s streets to pay their workers the same prevailing wage as unionized Department of Public Works employees, up to $46.14 an hour. The measure is called the Clean Streets and Fair Pay Act.

What the Law Requires

Contractors that hire street cleaners for the city, including firms such as Ahsing Solutions, will have to match the pay scale of the city’s own unionized cleaning workforce. Some of these contractors currently pay street cleaners around $25 an hour while billing the city up to $200 an hour for supervision of that work, according to Mission Local’s review of contract records.

The law exempts community ambassador programs that are not primarily focused on street-cleaning work.

Where It Applies

Contracted street cleaners covered by the law work in the Tenderloin, the Mission District, SoMa, the Outer Richmond, the Castro and Hayes Valley.

Background

District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar introduced the legislation in January 2026. It went through the Budget and Finance Committee on September 16 before Tuesday’s full Board vote.

Melgar said the goal is to stop contractors from underpaying workers on jobs that would otherwise go to the city’s unionized workforce. “The whole point of the legislation is to protect the jobs of the unionized workforce, and not allow anyone in our city to undercut the collective bargaining agreement,” she said.

Sources: Mission Local, The San Francisco Standard, The Voice of San Francisco.

Photo: bryan…, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.