SEIU Local 521 says clerks, court reporters and other court employees will walk out over what it calls unfair labor practices; the court says it is funded at about 80 percent of its need and will keep essential services running.
Clerks, court reporters, accountants and other employees of the San Mateo County Superior Court plan to walk off the job on Monday, in a strike their union says has no end date and the court says will not close a single courthouse door.
Service Employees International Union Local 521 announced the strike at a rally in the rain outside the County Center in Redwood City on Friday, saying members had voted 99 percent to authorize it. The union calls it an unfair labor practice strike, accusing court management of failing to bargain in good faith and, according to Bay City News, of assigning workers to duties outside their job classifications without training. Those are the union’s allegations; the court has not publicly responded to them point by point.
“The workers preparing to walk the picket lines are the very people who make our justice system function,” said Stacy Gaskill, a court reporter and the union’s chapter president, in the union’s announcement. “In one of the wealthiest counties in America, justice should never depend on how much money you have.”
What stays open
In a Nov. 12 release, the court said all of its locations would remain open and that managers and unrepresented employees would cover critical work. Services the court says will continue include emergency domestic violence restraining orders, criminal arraignments and other proceedings with statutory deadlines, custody arraignments, stays in eviction cases and civil harassment proceedings.
Document drop boxes will be available at the Redwood City and South San Francisco courthouses, and at the juvenile branch in San Mateo for juvenile filings. Some non-emergency matters may be continued or rescheduled, the court said, and the public should expect delays. It asked people to check its website on the day of the strike.
The same numbers, read two ways
What is striking about the dispute is how much the two sides agree on the underlying problem. Both describe a court stretched thin. They differ on who is responsible and what can be done about it.
The union points to its own figures: filings up 20.4 percent between the 2022-23 and 2024-25 fiscal years, a case clearance rate down 12.3 percent over the same span, vacancies rising from 10 percent in 2022-23 to 17 percent in 2025-26, and family law hearings now being set into spring 2027. “Our members do not want to strike,” said Erica Boffi, a court reporter. “They want to be inside the courthouse serving the public.”
The court’s answer is the state budget. It expects about $53.5 million in base allocations from the state for the 2026-27 fiscal year, against an operational need of about $67.3 million under the Judicial Council’s workload formula, leaving it funded at roughly 80 percent. About $3.75 of every $5 it receives goes to personnel, the court said, and it must also pay for technology, cybersecurity, facilities and interpreters.
“We understand that many employees, like families throughout the Bay Area, continue to face economic pressures and rising costs,” said Jeniffer B. Alcantara, the court executive officer. “At the same time, the Court has a responsibility to carefully manage public funds and operate within the resources provided by the State of California.”
What the court says it has already paid
The court published a list of the raises and payments it says represented employees have received since 2018: cost-of-living increases of 5 percent in 2018 and 2022, 4 percent in 2023 and smaller raises in other years; a series of one-time payments; a 3 percent equity adjustment in December 2025 for deputy court clerks, the union’s largest job classification; and retention bonuses of $5,000 to $10,000 for court reporters. It cited a 2026 salary study by CPS HR Consulting that, it says, found its wages and benefits for represented positions at or above those of neighboring Bay Area courts.
The union did not address that study in its announcement. Its demands, as described by Bay City News, center on staffing and retention, respect for job classifications and an agreement that “strengthens court services for the community.”
Why the courthouse is not the county
Residents may expect the county to step in. It cannot, at least not directly. Since the state took over trial court funding in the late 1990s, California’s superior courts have been state-funded entities with their own employees, and their budgets are set in Sacramento through the Judicial Council, not by county supervisors. That is why the court’s release frames its offer around state allocations, and why the gap it describes is one that other trial courts across California share.
The Inquirer emailed SEIU Local 521, the court’s executive office, the Judicial Council, the San Mateo County Bar Association and Catherine Fisk, a labor law professor at UC Berkeley, for comment. None had responded by Saturday night.
Both sides say a deal is still possible before Monday. The union says court leadership can avert the walkout by “returning to meaningful negotiations.” The court says it remains “committed to reaching a fair and sustainable agreement.” Until one of those statements becomes a signed contract, anyone with business at the Hall of Justice in Redwood City this week should plan for longer lines.
Desmond Akers covers the cities and counties of the greater Bay Area, from Oakland and San Jose to the Peninsula, the North Bay and the East Bay suburbs, for Around the Region. More from Desmond Akers
