On Friday, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie released his proposed budget that would lay off about 100 city employees to confront a $782 million budget shortfall.
On Wednesday, more than 1,000 workers rallied on the steps of the San Francisco City Hall to protest those layoffs and other cuts.
“When public service is under attack, what do we do?” One speaker yelled as the rally started around noon.
“Stand up, fight back!” Attendees, many of whom were city workers, shouted back.
Judy Sorro, an employment liaison for CityBuild, a program run through the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which helps get people careers in construction through apprentice training programs, told Mission Local that she found out on Friday that she was among the proposed layoffs.
In April, Sorro said, the mayor was celebrating CityBuild’s 20th anniversary. Now, Sorro said, she and a handful of her coworkers may be out of a job.
Other employees, like La Rhonda Reddic, said they were notified that their positions would be cut, but that they would be guaranteed another job with the city.
Reddic is an operations manager for on-site healthcare at four public housing locations. She’s confident she’ll find another position. But, she asked, “What about the people that we’re not going to be able to serve?”
Speakers at the rally called for attendees to ask the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to reverse those layoffs and other job cuts. Although Lurie announced cutting 1,400 positions, the city had only set aside funding for 470 of them. Just 100 are currently filled.
The Board cannot add more money to the budget, but it can move money around that’s been allocated to something else, called “add-backs”. Those may be trickier to do this year, though, because of the city’s budget shortfall.
The Supervisors have through July to approve the budget.
When announcing his proposed budget on Friday, Lurie said the city’s budget crisis necessitates “painful decisions.”
“Here’s the bottom line: We have to stop spending more than we can afford,” Lurie said Friday. “The era of soaring city budgets and deteriorating street conditions is over.”
Many of the people who attended the rally were members of two public-sector workers’ unions: Local 21 and SEIU 1021, the largest union of city workers. After the rally, union members filed into City Hall to speak during the public comment period of the city’s Budget and Appropriations Committee, filling the Board of Supervisors’ chambers and requiring an overflow room.
More than 40 people spoke over a 45-minute period. One contract compliance officer, also for CityBuild, started to cry at the lectern.
Representatives of Local 21 and SEIU 1021 said they received lists of people on the proposed layoff list on Friday.
Affiliates of the People’s Budget Coalition, an umbrella organization of nonprofit groups and community organizations, also attended the rally Wednesday. Those demonstrators were worried about different budget cuts.
San Francisco contracts with outside groups, including local nonprofits, to deliver services including support for the homeless, and cultural programming. Lurie’s proposed budget includes $200 million in cuts to nonprofits over two years.
Mission Local has compiled a list of some of the nonprofits facing cuts, and will be updating the list. The budget defines how much funding will be available for each agency, but each agency decides which nonprofits to fund.
About 43 percent of San Francisco’s general fund goes towards salaries and benefits, according to SPUR, a San Francisco-based think tank. An additional 32 percent pays for grants and contracts with those outside groups.
After the hearing, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, who is the chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, told Mission Local that the Budget and Appropriations Committee will be looking more closely in the coming weeks at who got laid off and what vacant positions are proposed to be eliminated.
One of her priorities, Chan said, is figuring out if she can prevent those 100-odd layoffs.
Many of the 1,400 positions are vacant thanks to two things: a hiring freeze announced in January, and the city’s general inability to hire people quickly.
Supervisors on the five-member Budget and Appropriations Committee first review the mayor’s proposed budget. By the end of the month, they will recommend a budget to the entire board for a vote.
Back at the rally, Mission Local caught up with two city workers who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
Even before the news of the 1,400 cuts, they said their departments already felt short-staffed.
They used to work in the same department. One left for another city department in December. Now, his former colleague is doing two jobs: His own, and that of his former coworker.
Given the size of the budget deficit, a loss of only 100 jobs seems like a fairly benign outcome. Perhaps these unions should be celebrating instead – it could easily have been much much worse.
Us people who work in the private sector get laid off all the time, what makes public employees special that they should not get laid off if the city can’t afford it? It’s not like their doing a good job, just look at our roads and convoluted permitting processes.
What do you imagine most of these jobs are? These cuts include road maintenance and Muni and healthcare and restaurant inspections and building-code enforcement and the defender’s office and food pantries. Many of these services are lifelines to seniors and the disabled. The private sector doesn’t provide any of these vital things.
You ain’t seen a shithole city until you lose this stuff. Also, SF is both a city and a county, with an international airport and a shipping port. Not cheap.
San Francisco performed most of these functions a decade ago when it had more people, fewer employees, and a much smaller budget. How much less effective have restaurant inspections gotten in that time?
We have a union.
These people should be protesting to grow San Francisco’s economy then so the unlimited money spigot tech money got them in the 2010s turns back on.
Thanks for reporting
In the private world, people just get fired or laid off for no reason
If there is no money coming inthen people need to be realistic
Never hear an discussion about paycuts , reducing the salary or working additional hours for the same amount.
Compromise
Until this city gets serious and cleans up the crime , including the drug dens and homeless who have taken over the public property and cleans this place up, no one or business wants to be here or come here .
Open your eyes , sf is a “shithole”
Why does this city government have the largest most highly paid employees in the country ?
Get real
I guess the difference between progressives and populists is that progressives thrive on directing public revenue streams to sympathetic institutions like public sector labor and charity nonprofits while populists center the people to set policy that determines what kind of head count and contracts we need to advance those policies.
The ethical conflicts of interest in this self serving arrangement not only fails to achieve policy goals. The severing of connection to, affirmatively marginalizing, residents renders the progressives political rounding error.
The signals that a structural transformation is eminent have been growing increasingly clear for the past decade. Democrats and SF progs have been in denial over this and the right wing has rampaged into the vacuum. The more progs center funding nonprofits and labor headcount (and woke scolding residents on public squalor), the more the right wing will consolidate power.
Mayor Lurie’s version of the Big, Ugly Bill.