Push underway to bring San Francisco city workers back to the office

Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Push underway to bring SF city workers back to the office
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is asking that every current telecommute agreement be reviewed immediately. Lurie hopes workers will come back without hesitation.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- President Donald Trump has ordered federal employees to come back to the office five days a week. Now, some San Francisco city employees are wondering if Mayor Daniel Lurie will ask them to return to the office as well.

During his inaugural speech earlier this month, Lurie did not mention city workers but said he wanted to entice people to come back in person.

"My job is not to demand that the private sector be back in the office every day. My job is to make you want to be downtown again for work, with your friends and with your family," said Lurie.

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According to the city's Department of Human Resources, 30 percent of San Francisco city employees are in hybrid mode, meaning a combination of in-person and remote work.

How and why did the city embrace a hybrid work policy?

In July 2021, then-Mayor London Breed signed an amendment to the Health Care Security Ordinance expanding its telecommuting policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, many private companies also allowed their employees to work from home.

But following a cycle of decline that hit the downtown area especially hard, Breed suggested that private companies help downtown's economic recovery by bringing employees back to the office five days a week, yet some of her own city workers were still not back.

Here's what Breed said during a December 2023 interview.

"So to be clear, most of our 34,000 city employees are back at work, most of them, but you see City Hall pretty much at capacity and other city buildings, many of the folks who maybe are not at work are technical support," said Breed.

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Despite vowing to change things, it appeared City Hall's attitude, at the time, was to "let sleeping dogs lie."

Supervisors from different city departments have been the ones approving and enforcing the telecommuting policy.

But the Lurie administration has said a few changes are on the way.

ABC7 News obtained an internal memo sent to department heads.

Mayor Lurie is asking that every current telecommute agreement be reviewed immediately. He also wants to evaluate the operational needs of every city department to make sure the public is well-served and that any agreement must be renewed every year or more frequently.

Lurie hopes workers will come back without hesitation.

"We are going to be in constant communication with the public sector union and labor, we will be in constant communication and what our hope is that we get as many people back as many days in the office as possible, many of which are five days a week already," Lurie said during a recent interview.

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Last July, unions representing Philadelphia city workers fought to keep things remote despite Mayor Cherelle Parker demanding that they return.

"I am at war. I'm at war, Philadelphia, with the status quo," said Mayor Parker.

A judge eventually sided with the mayor, forcing city workers to return to the office five days a week.

Meanwhile, several unions representing federal employees are ready to challenge President Trump's return-to-the-office order.

"I do think it's time to come back to the office and I think that's true of local government as well. I wish everybody would come back to the office," said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey.

John Goodwin of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) says more people in the office could help address the growing deficit many transit agencies face.

"A greater return to work certainly would have a beneficial impact on public transit ridership," said Goodwin.

Goodwin points out that when you talk about the overall number of people in San Francisco telecommuting, private employees and public servants, 20 percent were still telecommuting in 2023, according to the Bay Link blog of the MTC. That's the largest percentage of any metro area in the entire state.

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