San Francisco municipal unions are blasting Mayor Daniel Lurie over his decision to lay off more than 100 city workers and freeze hundreds of positions in order to tackle a looming budget shortfall.
In its first step towards subduing a staggering shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle, the mayor’s office sent layoff notices sent to 127 workers Monday morning.
The goal is to eventually reduce the city’s workforce by 500 jobs in order to save roughly $100 million in city spending on the way to enacting additional cuts that will total $400 million.
“Facing a budget deficit that will rise to $1 billion, alongside significant cuts in federal and state funding, we have a choice: take action now or be forced to do twice as much in the coming years,” Lurie said in an emailed statement. “The steps we’re taking today 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.”
The leadership of SEIU Local 1021, IFPTE Local 21 and Teamsters Local 856 strongly disagreed and said the cuts are drastic, will put a strain on already understaffed city departments and aren’t necessary to manage the city’s budget.
“The city has come a long way since the pandemic, but cutting public services now would be a huge step backward we can’t afford to take.”
Brittany Hewett, San Francisco General Hospital registered nurse
Union leaders say a lot of the city’s financial pain is the result of H.R. 1, the so-called “big, beautiful bill,” a spending plan passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump. The bill cut more than $100 billion in taxes for the top 1 percent of earners and gutted federal allocations to state and local governments in a wide array of areas, including health care, food assistance and other programs.
“The city has come a long way since the pandemic, but cutting public services now would be a huge step backward we can’t afford to take,” said Brittany Hewett, a city resident and registered nurse at San Francisco General Hospital. “Clean streets, strong hospitals, and green transit are just a few of the essential services that our recovery relies on, and those don’t happen without city staff to do them.”
Union leadership urged San Francisco politicians and residents to support two proposals for managing the budget without massive cuts.
One is to endorse and vote for Proposition D, the so-called “overpaid CEO act,” which will raise roughly $300 million annually for the city by taxing businesses whose executives who earn more than 100 times the median wage paid to their employees.
“Large corporations are cashing in on Trump’s tax breaks, but we can make them pay their fair share in San Francisco by passing Prop. D in June,” said Mark Leach, a representative with Teamsters Local 856 who also lives in San Francisco.
The other step is to tap into the city’s $1.4 billion reserve fund, which includes almost $750 million in non-emergency reserves that can be sued to stave off layoffs until new revenue comes in, according to the unions.
