“In a period where lots of people have lost jobs and people are desperate for work, people will go and end up working under dangerous conditions and they will do so believing they have no other alternative,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Cities across the country, from New York to Seattle, are moving aggressively to confront rising income inequality and falling real wages for low-paid workers. These cities can learn important lessons from San Francisco’s bold experiments over the last 15 years.