San Francisco criminal and civil court clerks — the people who manage court records, process court filings and prepare court orders — are going on strike Thursday after complaining for months of overwhelming workloads.
A “last-ditch effort to find a resolution” between the clerk’s union and court management failed on Wednesday afternoon, said criminal courtroom clerk Rob Borders.
The court will remain open for mandated services, Court Executive Officer Brandon Riley said in a statement, but disruptions are predicted. Management employees will “triage” emergency matters and prioritize cases with statutory deadlines, like criminal arraignments.
The court “remains committed to reaching a fair contract with its valued employees that reflects the current fiscal outlook imposed by ongoing reduced state funding,” the statement said.
Clerks first threatened to strike four months ago. Their demands have not changed: They want more staff and better training to handle the influx of criminal cases that have doubled their workload.
The number of new misdemeanor and felony cases filed in San Francisco Superior Court has outpaced the number of cases resolved nearly every month for the last two years.
San Francisco police and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins have said they are making an effort to pursue more low-level crimes.
Last week, the clerk’s union reiterated the consequences if its demands are not met, writing in a statement that “gross mismanagement” has led to delays and errors that have prevented defendants’ timely release.
“I’ve been aware of more instances where someone is not released when the court ordered them released than I have in the 10 years I’ve worked at the court,” Borders wrote. “We have tried everything in our power to get management to work with us to fix this, to no avail.”
The clerks’ union has been in negotiations since September, according to civil court clerk Kimberly Septein, the SEIU 1021 San Francisco Superior Court chapter president.
There have been more than two dozen bargaining and mediation sessions with court management, Riley wrote. At the beginning of October, an overwhelming majority of union members voted to strike for the second time in two years.
The threat of picket lines outside the Hall of Justice last October was staved off by negotiations with management in the 11th hour. But it was a tenuous agreement on “terms that don’t really address the issues,” Borders said at the time.
Court management promised clerks a 2-percent annual raise, less than the annual three percent U.S. inflation rate, and “ongoing meetings” after the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the court in October.
In the following months, underlying issues of chronic short-staffing were not resolved through mediation, according to members of the clerks’ bargaining team. They rejected the tentative agreement in November.
Clerks began picketing outside both the civil and criminal courts last week to warn that a strike was brewing. Their representatives met with court management on Tuesday and Wednesday.
This time around, bargaining teams reached an impasse. Clerks say they will begin forming a picket line around the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant St. at 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning before moving to the civil courthouse at 400 McAllister St.
Huh. You mean that going on wild arresting sprees and locking up more and more people tends to have ripple effects? And that maybe there should have been a better solution than “clog the courts and jails with no regard for the consequences?”
Nah. Jail and arrests are always the solution. That’s why the U.S. is #1 — it imprisons a higher percentage of its population than nearly everywhere but China and North Korea, those bastions of freedom.
Fire them all and get people in there who want that cushy high-paying job.
I’m serious. Why don’t you list the salaries they’re making at public expense?
Dear sir or madam —
According to this city website, they make between $108K and $131K.
https://careers.sf.gov/classifications/index.php?classCode=8113
How much do you deem acceptable and not “cushy” nor “high-paying”?
JE
“How much do you deem acceptable and not “cushy” nor “high-paying”?”
It is a good question. AIUI being a court clerk requires a lot of attention to detail. But it is not an intellectually demanding post, and does not require a degree.
So I confess to being surprised that these positions are paid six figures. I would have thought about half of that.
But the real answer to your question depends on how pay should be determined. Is it based on the minimum amount it would take to replace these people? Or is it based on what they say that they “need”?
The other factor with city/county jobs is the value of the benefits. By all accounts the healthcare and pension benefits for them are extremely generous. and they have job security.
Half of that????
Just how do you expect someone to survive in SF on $50,000 a year?
Maybe they could call on the public defender to help out by encouraging obviously guilty defendants to agree to plea deals and in general stop stringing cases along.
So, cardinal: which aspects of due process would you want canceled or skipped over for you, if you were accused of a crime?