San Francisco’s Labor Movement is Stuck in Neutral

Evidence of labor’s estrangement from San Francisco’s progressive movements continues to mount. The Plumbers Union threatens to initiate mass evictions through the demolition of a 156-unit SRO, a leader in SEIU 790 publicly endorses and actively solicits political support for an Assessor candidate not backed by his local, and in the city budget process union-benefiting revenue increases are kept off the table.

In addition, while the San Francisco Labor Council is expected to endorse Prop D (MTA reform), the San Francisco Democratic Party voted to oppose the initiative. The initiative would give the pro-union Board of Supervisors three appointments to the Municipal Transit Authority, the body that recently approved the loss of as many as 200 union jobs.

Nor could organized labor stop the San Francisco Democratic Party from voting 20-5 to endorse Phil Ting over Gerardo Sandoval in the San Francisco Assessor’s race. Sandoval has been a consistently strong labor vote on the Board, and his wife is a former organizer for SEIU Local 250.Yet neither of these facts deterred the Democratic Party from voting overwhelmingly to endorse Ting.

The one-sided Party vote raises questions as to how hard labor lobbied on behalf of their ally Sandoval. If such lobbying did in fact occur, than labor’s influence over city politics is even weaker than previously thought

How did San Francisco go from a fierce labor town to one in which local unions stay neutral in mayoral races and can’t get voters to even consider raising taxes to fund new services?

The long term historical answer is that the shift from a blue-collar city with an active port to a financial services center reduced union power. But within the past decade San Francisco unions had a successful grassroots “Labor to Neighbor” electoral program, had a strongly pro-union mayor in Willie Brown, and a voting majority on the local Democratic Party Central Committee.

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