Thousands of members of SEIU Local 1000 walked off the job on Wednesday in Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and both sides are due back in mediation on Oct. 30 with little sign of a deal.
By Staff Reporter
Thousands of California state employees walked off the job on Wednesday in a one-day strike, the first in the 44-year history of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the largest union in state government, as it pressed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for raises, more help with health premiums and a retreat from his order requiring most office workers to report in person four days a week.
Pickets formed outside state buildings in Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Fresno and San Bernardino, according to accounts by CalMatters, published in the Los Angeles Times, KQED and CBS News Bay Area. KQED reported that the walkout was expected to disrupt service at the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Employment Development Department and State Parks, among other agencies.
The union represents roughly 96,000 to 100,000 workers, including analysts, custodians, nurses, cooks, paralegals and office staff, about 40 percent of the nearly 246,000 active state employees outside the California State University system, according to KQED. More than 96 percent of voting members authorized the strike earlier this month, CBS reported.
What the union wants
Local 1000’s contract expired in late June. In a June bargaining update, the union said it had proposed general salary increases totaling 20 percent over three years: 7 percent in 2026, 7 percent in 2027 and 6 percent in 2028. It is also seeking larger state contributions toward health coverage and what it calls “transparent telework policies based on operational needs.”
The telework dispute has sharpened since July 1, when Mr. Newsom’s executive order requiring four in-office days a week took effect. Last month, the governor vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have allowed each state agency to set its own telework policy, CBS reported.
“The budget is balanced on state employees’ backs,” the union’s president, Anica Walls, told CalMatters. State workers have accepted pay reductions in three of the eight years Mr. Newsom has been in office, and a year ago the governor sought wage concessions to help close a budget gap, CalMatters reported.
The union has framed the walkout as an “unfair practice strike,” which the union says is permitted despite its contract’s no-strike clause when the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as refusing to bargain in good faith. According to the union’s contract campaign page, the state Public Employment Relations Board issued a complaint against the state on Sept. 29 in response to the union’s bad-faith bargaining charges, and the union filed an additional charge against the California Department of Human Resources, known as CalHR, on Oct. 9. A complaint is a preliminary step and not a finding that the state broke the law.
The administration’s position
CalHR, which negotiates for the governor, has not publicly accepted the union’s account. “The department remains focused on achieving a fair and responsible agreement and continues to be available at the bargaining table,” a spokeswoman, Angela Musallam, said in a statement reported by CalMatters, KQED and CBS. She said departments maintain contingency plans to limit disruptions.
Earlier this month, the administration asked the labor board to block the strike, arguing that it would place “undue pressure” on the state to concede while the two sides were in mediation, and that public health and safety would be at risk if essential employees walked out, KQED reported. On Oct. 16, the board allowed the strike to go forward on the condition that the union exempt additional employees, most of them at state prisons, and directed the state to seek replacement workers where possible. Fewer than 5,000 employees deemed essential at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Caltrans, the Department of State Hospitals and other agencies were required to work.
The strike carries a cost for those who joined it. The union told members that the state intends to dock pay for hours missed, that departments were instructed to record strike absences as AWOL for timekeeping, and that the state’s payroll cutoff is Oct. 22. The union said its strike fund is not meant to replace lost wages.
Bay Area picket lines
Outside the Elihu M. Harris State Office Building in downtown Oakland, workers chanted “No contract, no peace,” CalMatters reported. Representative Lateefah Simon, an Oakland Democrat, addressed the crowd. “For anyone to say that you don’t deserve wage justice, they haven’t looked at the rates of rent … at grocery prices,” she said.
Several Oakland strikers described the return-to-office order in terms of commuting costs in one of the country’s most expensive regions. Rebecca Bean, an analyst at the Department of Industrial Relations, told CalMatters that she commutes three hours a day by public transit to Oakland and that the policy has made it harder to care for her mother. Ezra Roberts, a Caltrans analyst, told KQED that health premiums “have gone up significantly.”
What comes next
The two sides are scheduled to resume mediation on Oct. 30. The union has said Wednesday’s action “won’t be the last time” members demonstrate their leverage if talks do not improve, though it has not announced further strike dates.
The dispute comes at a delicate moment for state finances. The Department of Finance reported this week that September tax receipts ran $2.9 billion ahead of the budget forecast, the kind of revenue strength the union has cited in arguing that the state can afford larger raises. The Legislative Analyst’s Office, however, has warned that the state faces a structural deficit, and every percentage point of a general raise for a workforce of this size carries a recurring cost.
Unions, including Local 1000, have traditionally been Mr. Newsom’s allies, CalMatters noted. Wednesday’s walkout is the second state worker strike of his tenure, after a three-day strike by the California Association of Professional Scientists in 2023.
Mr. Newsom is term-limited and leaves office in January. If no agreement is reached before then, the negotiations, and the question of whether state offices return to more flexible schedules, would pass to whoever wins the Nov. 3 election to succeed him.
