Members of SEIU Local 1021 voted 95 percent in favor of letting their bargaining team call a walkout, raising the prospect of Oakland’s first municipal strike since 2017 as the city confronts nine-figure budget gaps.
By Staff Reporter
Oakland’s largest union of city workers has authorized a strike, escalating a contract dispute that has run for months and putting new pressure on Mayor Barbara Lee about two weeks before she faces voters.
Service Employees International Union Local 1021 announced on Friday that after a week of voting at dozens of worksites, “more than 2,000 City of Oakland workers in SEIU Local 1021 have voted overwhelmingly—95.17% YES— to authorize the Bargaining Team to call a strike.” The union said no strike date had been selected.
The vote does not mean a walkout is imminent. It gives union negotiators leverage and the authority to call one. The union’s members, who include clerical staff, front-line service workers and 911 dispatchers, last went on strike in 2017.
What the union says it wants
The union has framed the dispute around staffing as much as pay. “We see so much our members could be doing for residents, but can’t do because we’re stretched so thin,” Antoinette Blue, the chapter president, said in the union’s bargaining update. “Our streets could be cleaner and safer, our 911 calls could be taken more quickly, our Head Starts could accept more kids, except none of this can happen because we don’t have the people here to do the work.” She called the understaffing “a policy choice.”
The contracts for SEIU, for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 and for two smaller bargaining units expired on June 30, according to a detailed account by the nonprofit Oakland Report. SEIU and Local 21 together represent about 3,100 city employees, and the unions say roughly one in five city positions is vacant.
The city has not publicly disclosed its bargaining positions. According to union bulletins summarized by Oakland Report, the city opened talks in May by asking employees to pay more toward medical coverage and an additional 1 percent of pay toward pensions, without new cost-of-living raises. In September, SEIU described a revised city offer as 7 percent in raises over three years plus bonuses the union said were neither guaranteed nor pensionable. Those terms have not been confirmed by the city.
At her State of the City address on Oct. 6, which union members picketed, Ms. Lee addressed the dispute directly. “We are working very, very hard, not just to get a contract but to get a fair contract. Every city worker deserves this, and I know the City Council and myself are working constantly to that end,” she said, according to The Oaklandside. Julian Ware, Local 21’s vice president for Oakland, told the outlet that his union planned its own strike authorization vote later this month.
The budget backdrop
Any settlement must fit inside a budget under sustained strain. The city’s finance department projects annual general-fund deficits of roughly $115 million to nearly $130 million through the 2029-30 fiscal year, Oakland Report found. Voters in June rejected Measure E, a parcel tax that would have raised about $34 million a year and that the city’s budget had counted on. The City Council declared “extreme fiscal necessity” for a fourth consecutive year to tap restricted funds, and both Moody’s and S&P downgraded the city’s general-obligation credit in late 2024 and early 2025.
The council’s recent police contract complicates the arithmetic. Approved on Sept. 15 and running through June 2031, it includes raises totaling 14 percent and a “me too” clause entitling officers to match better terms that other unions later win, according to Oakland Report, which cited a staff estimate of the deal’s net five-year cost at $72.1 million. Any richer civilian settlement could therefore raise police costs as well.
The legal path to a strike is also not straightforward. California’s public-sector labor rules generally require impasse procedures to run their course before an economic strike, unless a union alleges unfair labor practices. As of early October, Oakland Report said it found no public record of an impasse declaration, state mediation, fact-finding or an unfair practice charge before the Public Employment Relations Board in this round. In December 2017, when city workers last walked out for about a week, then-Mayor Libby Schaaf called the strike unlawful.
A contrast across the bay
The Oakland standoff stands in contrast to San Francisco, where the same union reached an early agreement with Mayor Daniel Lurie that the San Francisco Standard reported would avoid layoffs through 2029. Amendments extending SEIU Local 1021’s San Francisco contract through June 2031, with a pledge of no layoffs of permanent civil service employees through June 2029, are scheduled for a first vote before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
The difference reflects the two cities’ finances as much as their politics. San Francisco’s budget is several times the size of Oakland’s, giving it more room to trade long-term wage commitments for labor peace. Oakland, which has already leaned on one-time money to balance its books, has less margin to absorb either a costly settlement or a prolonged disruption to permitting, inspections and other services.
The dispute also lands in the middle of an election. Ms. Lee is seeking re-election on Nov. 3, and The Oaklandside reported that she has been endorsed by Local 21 and every other major city union except the police union. For now, the union says only that members should “stay tuned.”
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