Two of the city’s largest public sector unions are vowing to fight “every one” of the layoffs proposed by Mayor Daniel Lurie earlier this week, saying Lurie’s touted San Francisco recovery is contingent on city workers.
“If we don’t have things like clean streets, strong hospitals, and effective transit, we don’t have a recovery,” said Bianca Polovina, president of IFPTE Local 21, which represents thousands of city workers.
The mayor “kind of speaks out of both sides of his mouth,” said Jennifer Esteen, a vice president at SEIU 1021, which has 16,000 members in city government. “He says, ‘We want to get people off the street, and we want them to get clean and sober from drugs.’ But at the same time, he’s cutting funding to the programs that do exactly that.”
The city gave 127 employees layoff notices on Monday. Lurie said these layoffs, which include nurses at Laguna Honda Hospital and staff at the city’s Office of Workforce and Economic Development, are necessary for balancing San Francisco’s budget, which is facing a two-year deficit of $650 million.
An even larger deficit is projected in the years after.
“We have a choice: Take action now or be forced to do twice as much in the coming years,” Lurie said. The layoffs are “a painful but necessary continuation of the work we’ve been doing since last year to manage taxpayer dollars responsibly and deliver the best possible services for San Franciscans.”
These cuts, Lurie added, “sets up our city for a broad and durable economic recovery.”
But budget woes do not justify the layoffs, said Polovina. “San Francisco is one of the richest cities in the world. When we talk about cutting essential services, cutting jobs, this is a choice, it is not a necessity.”
Polovina said IFPTE Local 21 is preparing to fight “every one” of the layoffs, a sentiment echoed by Esteen.
“Nobody should lose their job,” Esteen said.
The mayor plans to cut $400 million this year, with about $100 million of that coming from layoffs, and a freeze on hiring for certain positions — about 500 jobs total.
In the coming days and months, the unions plan to lobby supervisors, share stories about workers affected by the cuts, speak with voters, and hold rallies.
In the short term, the unions have asked the city to spend some of its “rainy-day fund” reserves to stave off layoffs. This is theoretically possible, but would likely require a veto-proof majority of the Board of Supervisors — an unlikely scenario, given the mayor’s many allies on the Board.
In the long term, unions are hoping to raise more funds for city jobs though Proposition D, a tax measure they placed onto the June ballot. If it passes, a special tax will be levied on companies whose CEOs earn 100 times more than the company’s median employee.
The mayor has opposed Prop. D on the grounds that it could cause companies to leave the city, or never set up shop here in the first place, due to a perception that San Francisco is unfriendly to business.
The unions think a local business tax hike is only fair because President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” gave businesses a federal tax cut. Plus, that same bill is part of the reason why the city has such a large deficit in the first place; Trump’s cuts to federal programs like Medicaid are hitting the city hard.
The unions expect Prop. D to pass. Despite Lurie’s close relationship with the current board, eight of the city’s 11 supervisors support it. And a January poll conducted by the Prop. D campaign found that 59 percent of likely voters in the city support it.
“All these corporations can afford to pay their fair share,” Esteen said. “And they need to do it so that we don’t lose our public services in San Francisco.”
There’s a lot of tax payers dollars being wasted.
Public employee unions do not have the ability to hear the word “budget.” They just want to get as much money from taxpayers as they possibly can.
Unless you are a member, they are not your friend.
offer an extra three years to retire and put that on the retirement board’s budget, watch a quarter to a third of the workforce would abandon ship and leave for happier times. Your deficit is now chopped in half.
Unfortunately , if there is less money coming into the coffers then there must be change .
SF government employees are paid top dollar in the country and get great benefits .
That they cannot address the issues here like clean streets drug dens and homeless yet also falls on them .
Why not just cut the pay for all by 10percent, or have everyone work additional hours a week for the same pay Work 44 hr for a 40 hour work week.
Also it maybe time to cut alot of middle management . I frankly dont see government workers working too hard in their offices or on the streets .
The only people I see working hard are dpw guys in the Tenderloin loading up the garbage from the homeless .
See alot of police standing around drinking coffee
With over 30,000 employees this city should be spotless and safe .
Finally please teach the employees to answer the phones and return calls .
Too much warming of the chairs still going on
Maybe pensions need to go
Private industry doesnt offer that anymore
Im sure some will not like this post but they neeed to get real
The world has changed Unfortunately life is harder for all of us
Everyone needs to consider others
Even if that means cutting pay benefits and pensions
If sf was cleaned up and the druggies and homeless gone the money would comeback
Ethically, public policy should be set by those with no direct interest in the outcomes, not those who would benefit from or compete for city funding, and contracting should follow from policy needs.
In San Francisco, this is backwards, where public sector labor and city funded nonprofits posit themselves as policymakers while simultaneously staking claims on public resources. They always pitch politics that require what they and they alone can catch.
We need for there to be strict walls of separation between policymaking on one hand and implementation and grants/contracting on the other.
The goal here is not to fire city workers, rather to have city headcount flex as policies flex in accordance with the needs as policy and administration determine. Those policies must be determined by disinterested citizens not unions defending headcount.
If labor expects for SF residents who have been exposed to the full brunt of neoliberal capitalism’s view of labor as disposable for 40 years now (which was reinforced by Democrats that public sector labor endorsed and worked to elect) to sympathize with public sector labor workers who enjoy benefits that most of us could only dream of, then they’re smoking crack. Solidarity is a two-way street.
What’s missing from this picture is the interest of working class San Franciscans, those who need to work in order to house, clothe and feed themselves but who are deemed “rich” and “privileged” by those who purport to center “the most vulnerable.”
SEIU’s Esteen: ‘We want to get people off the street, and we want them to get clean and sober from drugs.’ But at the same time, he’s cutting funding to the programs that do exactly that.”
Most all of this work is not done by represented SEIU or Local 21 employees, rather it is outsourced to mostly non-unionized nonprofits.
We had endless debates in NYC about “oh, if you tax the rich and the corporations, they’ll all leave and we’ll all die and it will all….”, and you know what? they didn’t. The rich still keep their 100k/yr club memberships to clubs they never go to and the big corporations still brag about their office in NYC, even if it costs them a pile of money – they’re STILL able to pay their c-level people tens of millions.
So, before you go on and on about how we need to make cuts to city services that do literally NOTHING but help the working people, so the RICH people don’t have to pay taxes. Use your brains folks. Stop pretending you’re being economical.
Economics isn’t high-school “how to balance your checkbook”. You INVEST in services and get long term payouts. You want to make it even MORE expensive to live in SF? You want to make traffic even WORSE? You want people who live here to need MORE parking? You think THAT is going to get rich people and rich corporations to stay?
Taxes have dropped MASSIVELY for the wealthy. Not a little bit, MASSIVELY. And you don’t need to think about city taxes, I’m talking about FEDERAL AND STATE. Those taxes are practically half what they used to be. These people have the money, they just want the poorest of us to pay the bill for the city they live in.
Maybe the “moderates” could get off their high-horses and take a look at ways to keep this city invested in itself and not constantly looking for ways to make working people pay more.
I stand with the nurses, teachers, and street cleaners whose hard work actually makes our city better. And, notably, there’s one type of public worker not getting laid off: SFPD officers, who Lurie is offering 14% raises to.
For comparison, it was widely considered a victory when SFUSD teachers got 5% raises, after going on strike for a week with enormous community support. The cops, who are already paid double what a teacher is, just show up and ask for 14% and get it.
By the way, an entire body of research shows there’s no relationship between police staffing levels and crime.
So yes, a lot of our money is indeed being wasted on non-contributing public sector employees, but not the ones the right-wingers in these comments think.
You know what we have to have cuts because the previous administration failed to watch the budget, it has to start somewhere, but that being said , I believe we can cut out the spending for the homeless population , and send them back to where they came from , and let their town or city provide for them. If you don’t cut the head off a snake it will keep coming back. Ship them out or deport them whatever the situation is and get them off the city payroll, and keep the city employees who work for a living .
Re-assess “urban renewal”. Dilapidated public housing takes up many blocks and many residents are driving very nice cars. Putting some of those blocks back on the market could easily balance the budget.
Interesting. I’m opposed to Prop. D. However, I support city workers. Something has to give, and Prop. D, is Prop. D. So, I need to vote against Prop. D or tell city workers get a new job. The good news: I never get what I want. 😉
“said Polovina. “San Francisco is one of the richest cities in the world.” Which is being bled dry from the spending.
Corporations should pay their people more – not pay more in local taxes which will cause them to leave “one of the richest cities in the world”.
If you want to protect City employees go to work cutting the funding going out to (non union?) non-profits. That’s a battle that no one has fought and won.
This is why unions are ridiculous. Because we need 10 people standing around a hole, watching some guy dig the hole.