San Francisco News Blog

Yet it seems unclear just how many workers stand to lose their jobs. First we heard it was well over 500. Then in the flier announcing last week's boisterous City Hall protest, the number 500 was bandied about. Then, the number 100 found its way into the press. And, today, we saw "45 to 70." What's the correct answer? Well, all of them -- depending on whom you ask.

In this case, we asked SEIU organizer Robert Haaland, and he answered 546. But there's an explanation that goes with that. Yes, 546 people are slated to be laid off. But the vast majority of them will almost certainly be hired back by the city.

Regardless of where one falls on unions, this is a shame -- these are relatively low-paid folks who serve the really low-paid and are vital cogs in the city's health care system. Yet the SEIU's oft-repeated refrain that Mayor Gavin Newsom "broke his promise" in failing to get a revenue-generating measure onto the November ballot to bring in funds now being saved by letting these 500 people go just doesn't add up.

SF Weekly has spoken with union organizers and members of the downtown business community regarding the efforts to get some form of revenue measure -- in plain English, a tax -- onto the ballot. Both SEIU representatives and members of the Chamber of Commerce acknowledge that their independent polls showed such a measure would not come close to passing. So it doesn't make much sense for the unions to accuse the mayor of "breaking a promise" to put a revenue measure on the ballot when that same union acknowledges that this was a hopeless cause. What's more, only the Board of Supervisors can put a measure on the ballot -- not the mayor.

SEIU organizer Robert Haaland said Newsom hasn't put forth "a good-faith effort" to find revenue that would have staved off these layoffs. "To be fair to the mayor's office, in July they did polling and we did polling that showed the revenue wouldn't pass in November," he said. Newsom, in Haaland's view, should have then worked hard to find other ways of raising revenue.

Haaland's view doesn't sound unreasonable. But If you're going to charge the mayor with being lazy and disengaged -- well, get in line and take a number. It's not the same as saying he broke a promise.
 

All hail the 14-foot SEIU puppet!

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Icon Frank Chu attempts to steal SEIU's protest thunder: "The SEIU was cheated by the White House and the 12 galaxies. They cheated me out of money for being a movie star, too."

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And we thought the most interesting spectacle at the SEIU protest Thursday afternoon was going to be the 14-foot puppet. True, the affair to protest the upcoming layoffs of 600 health care and clerical positions started out pretty placid, with a man burning incense in a ceremonial cup reciting a prayer in Spanish and workers dancing to funk music outside City Hall while brandishing signs reading "I am a woman." Yet the protest quickly heated up when a phalanx of union members stormed the mayor's office chanting "We're fired up! We can't take it no more!"

The doors to Gavin Newsom's Room 200 were soon locked, with two guards barricading the door and refusing entry to the press and SEIU Local 1021 President Damita Davis-Howard.

SEIU Local 1021 President Damita Davis-Howard attempted to persuade the guards outside of the mayor's office's locked door to let her join the protest going on inside. ​

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The officials even asked the handful of folks outside the door to back away from the area immediately in front of Newsom's door when a mass of 150 protesters flooded up the steps to continue the protests with megaphones.

​Yes, we've got an honest-to-goodness lawsuit involving the dildo factory down the block -- and, no, it doesn't involve anyone getting crushed, mangled, impaled, asphyxiated or any other vaguely sexual manner of industrial accident.

Rather, a quintet of former workers at San Francisco's Vixen Creations on Monday filed suit in the city's Superior Court claiming they were stiffed ... on overtime pay.

The disgruntled five's workaday routine wasn't so titillating; the suit quotes their duties as "mixing silicone, pouring the silicone into molds, pulling the finalized products out of the molds, and making new molds for the products" -- a job that paid between $10 and $13 an hour. Of course, the products they were hauling in and out of the molds included "The Bandit," "The Outlaw," and, of course, "The Goodfella" ("As close to a real cock as possible").

The workers say they often spent well over eight hours a day shlepping Bandits and Goodfellas and whatnot in the company's San Francisco factory -- but they claim that when they glanced at their paychecks, they'd been given the shaft.

​Unionized social workers staged a rally in front of San Francisco's Human Services Agency (HSA) building today, with labor organizers claiming that Mayor Gavin Newsom has reneged on his end of a budget deal hashed out earlier this year.

The organizers, from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the city's largest union, assert that $38 million given up to the city during contract negotiations with the mayor's office this spring and summer has not been rewarded, as promised, with new-found revenue to prevent layoffs in the ranks of the city's social workers.

Said SEIU Political Coordinator Robert Haaland, "Why would we ever in the future agree to any wage concessions when all we got was a broken promise?"

Was Bob defrauded here in San Francisco?

​Late last month, SF Weekly ran several stories about the purported San Francisco ties of NBC Contractors, a scandal-infested building firm charged with dozens of felonies in Alameda County.

The firm is charged with systematically forcing its Chinese electricians to work 12-hour days and six-day weeks while paying them below the city's minimum wage -- but reporting to government authorities that the men were paid prevailing wage and worked only part-time.

Depositions taken from allegedly defrauded workers by Oakland labor attorney Ellyn Moscowitz listed three San Francisco work sites: The Sanchez School, Mission Neighborhood Center, and Moscone Club House. Union officials at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 6 told SF Weekly that they had personally met with NBC workers building the Sanchez School who complained they were being defrauded (and mentioned this scam to then-Mayor Willie Brown, who is now the attorney for NBC boss Monica Ung). The San Francisco Unified School District, however, denied it had ever employed NBC. An e-mail from spokeswoman Heidi Anderson noted that "NBC has no business at Sanchez or any other SFUSD site."

After a public records request filed by SF Weekly, though, the district is changing its tune.

​The inaugural Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1882 in New York City. The prevailing wage at the time was a penny a century and Americans' favorite pastimes included hopscotch, dying of cholera, and sea chanteys.

Much has changed -- sea chanteys are no longer a passion of the masses -- but Labor Day has been a Federal holiday since 1894.

As we enjoy what the U.S. Department of Labor calls "A national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country," how can we put the labor back into Labor Day?

10. Go into labor. If your bouncing baby is born today, Sept. 7, he or she will share a birthday with The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde -- who famously sang about working on a chain gang -- and director Elia Kazan -- who even more famously portrayed unions as murderous, criminal enterprises in On the Waterfront.

9. Read Love's Labours Lost. Here -- you needn't even leave the house. Or, watch Matthew Lillard -- yes, the guy who played Shaggy in Scooby-Doo -- do Shakespeare here.  

8. Go root on some union workers. Sadly, the San Francisco Giants are out of town and the Oakland A's have the day off -- members of both teams belong to the Major League Baseball Players Association. If you were to show up at either squad's stadium, however, and insist upon gaining entry, a member of the Police Officers Association would probably be called in sooner or later.

Don Feria

Police escort a woman from NBC General Contractors' Oakland offices during a May raid

​If you're looking for the Lord Voldemort of local labor, Bay Area union officials have a nomination: Monica Ung. The owner of NBC General Contractors has been charged by Alameda County prosecutors with methodically defrauding her limited-English workers -- and the state -- of millions or even tens of millions of dollars.

In a nutshell, Ung is accused of exploiting her Chinese immigrant labor pool by stiffing them with substandard wages, then turning around and reporting hourly payments more than double what employees were actually earning on public works jobs. What's more, she reportedly forced her laborers to toil up to 12 hours a day, six days a week -- but reported to government overseers that they were working only 20-odd hours weekly. The rise and fall of her alleged criminal scheme -- and how local governments failed to intercede -- is the cover feature in this week's East Bay Express. But while Ung is facing dozens of felony counts in an Alameda County courtroom, union officials told SF Weekly they believe she may have defrauded workers -- and the government -- here in San Francisco, too.

"We think that she was able to pull off this fraud in San Francisco, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, and throughout the Bay Area because of the how she did her time cards and intimidated her workers," said Victor Uno, the business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 595.

Uno added that the numbers Ung reported to the government ought to have raised serious red flags -- but didn't.

​The union for BART's drivers and station agents blamed the system's financial woes on George W. Bush and greedy management while the system pointed the finger at well-compensated, overtime-hoarding employees.

And the riding public can offer a Mercutio-like pox on both their houses while dozing off on the Pittsburg-Bay Point train, because the union-management sniping is no longer being made with the prospect of a disastrous rail strike hanging in the balance. Yesterday around 80 percent of the holdout Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 1555 ratified the contract hammered out hours before that strike would have commenced on Aug. 16, staving off the Bay Area's last, best chance to experience gridlock woes that would have landed us on the front page of the New York Times.

Before slipping out of the public eye until the next contract go-round, ATU President Jesse Hunt had some harsh words for BART management -- after the contract was ratified.

Just when you thought they were out ... they pull you back in

​You know how BART is going to run 24 hours during Labor Day weekend while the Bay Bridge is closed? Well, maybe not! How about zero hours?

A strike -- and the idea of a Dunkirk-like fleet of small boats being required to move folks across the Bay -- is once again a possibility. While BART's largest union, the SEIU Local No. 1021 enthusiastically posted its 75 percent ratification of the transit agency's labor proposal online yesterday, the Amalgamated Transit Union No. 1555 did not bother to self-report its overwhelming spurning of the deal. Make of that what you will. Yeah, it was late -- but Twittering doesn't require vast expenditures of effort.

Even the French are growing less sympathetic with transportation strikes these days. You don't have to be an oracle to predict that with both the private and public sector shedding jobs and BART train operators earning healthy salaries, the public will not be getting behind potentially striking transit workers in solidarity. People are not in a charitable mood these days -- ask charities.

Seats: Still sticky. Union contracts: Tentatively agreed upon.

​BART's trains don't run 24 hours -- but its negotiations with unions do. After an all-night session, bedraggled transit and union officials emerged, blinking, before cameras not long ago to announce a tentative pact. 

Several sources contacted by SF Weekly expected the transit system's three largest unions to vote on the painstakingly forged contract by next week. It is unclear if the union negotiating teams will give their constituents a positive, negative, or neutral recommendation on the contract -- but sources tied to both unions and management we talked with were all cautiously optimistic.

Jean E. Hamilton, the president and chief negotiator for AFSCME -- the smallest of BART's big three unions -- said that she and her board will suggest that the union's 220 members approve the contract when they vote on Tuesday or Thursday. She confirmed that all three unions signed off on the "conceptual agreement."

​When one juxtaposes the terms "union negotiations" and "BART," images of men and women in jumpsuits driving or fixing trains come to mind.

You don't think of spokespeople or anyone with the term "multi-media" in his or her job. But you should.

Of the five employees in BART's communications department, two are union-represented and would head out on strike with their brothers and sisters if it comes to that in ... nine hours or so.

Last call?

​Cabdrivers picking up fares at 1 a.m. at the Pittsburg-Bay Point BART station don't greet them with a "Hello," "Where to?" or even "What's going on?" It's always "So, you fell asleep on the train, eh?"

It's a uniquely unpleasant -- and financially unenviable -- situation to be roused by a BART worker at a terminus station when the hour in which one could catch a return train has passed. And yet, the ongoing BART negotiations are brewing a potential new meaning for "last train."

Tomorrow is the deadline for the four-month negotiating session; if the clock strikes midnight and a deal is not in place, then a BART strike could render every station after-hours Pittsburg-Bay Point.

Will Harper

If ever you were looking to keep Gavin Newsom away, scare up a picket line

Employees of the University of California vociferously protesting proposed fee hikes and furlough days had an unforeseen consequence on the plans of one Mayor Gavin Newsom -- who may or may not have a Santa Clara University bumper sticker on the back of his hybrid SUV. The protesters this morning moved their picket line a few steps down the road to the headquarters of  FibroGen, Inc., where the mayor was scheduled to show up and talk pretty about a joint venture between the Mission Bay company and U.C. San Francisco.

That joint venture is still joint, but it didn't get Newsom's benediction today: Jelger Kalmijn, the president of the UPTE-CWA union representing the U.C. system's research, technical, and professional employees, got a call this morning from Newsom's chief of staff, Steve Kawa. Kawa told the union head that Newsom doesn't cross picket lines, and wouldn't be seen in Mission Bay today.

"We're extremely grateful to him for recognizing the gravity of the situation at U.C. and helping us to pressure the university into working out solutions," said Kalmijn. It also warrents mentioning -- but not by Kalmijn -- that crossing a picket line manned by researchers hoping to cure cancer and quash genetic diseases looks bad for a gubernatorial candidate.

http://world.nycsubway.org

No cooling off period for you!

Update, 10:30 p.m.: BART workers with the ATU Local No. 1555 overwhelmingly voted down the proposed contract, making the possibility of a strike that much more tangible.

A member of the BART board just told SF Weekly that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has let it be known that he will not grant the transit agency's unions a 60-day cooling off period if asked -- which could ratchet up the possibility of a pending strike.

At around 4:40, Doug Hoffner, the acting cabinet secretary for labor called all the chief negotiators for the transit agency and its unions and read a statement Schwarzenegger will release at around 5 p.m. The governor "Will not entertain a 60-day cooling off period. The public expects the parties to remain at the table until an agreement is reached."

The 900 train operators and station agents represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union No. 1555 voted on BART's proposed contract today; no word yet on whether that was an up or down vote, but down is the safer bet. The 1,800 or so workers represented by the SEIU Local No. 1021 will vote on Thursday. Assuming a "no" vote was put forth by both unions, ATU President Jesse Hunt yesterday told SF Weekly that labor would have requested the cooling off period from the governor, which would have put off the possibility of a strike for two months or more.

Now such a move has been nipped in the bud, and a strike could come as early as next week.

Repeated attempts to contact Hunt today have not been successful.

This photo was featured on the BART operators' Union Web site, along with text describing BART spokesman Linton Johnson as the 'Forbidden Fruit of Diligent Union Workers'

Earlier today, we noted that the nastiness level in the ongoing battle between BART and its unions had reached Spiro Agnew levels. Yet it appears the rhetoric may have gotten even a bit more hurtful than the combatants intended.

Posted on the Web site of the Amalgamated Transit Union No. 1555 -- the union representing around 900 BART drivers and station agents -- was a photo of BART spokesman Linton Johnson, dressed as a giant banana for a Jamba Juice event some years ago.

If the goal was to make management's mouthpiece look ridiculous -- well, mission accomplished. But the text accompanying the picture did more than that. "Linton Johnson: Forbidden Fruit of diligent union workers," read the caption. It warrants mentioning that Johnson is openly gay -- making the notion of calling him a "fruit" more than a little offensive. ATU President Jesse Hunt said he was not aware of Johnson's sexuality or that the picture was posted on his union's Web site.

Got a stogie to share?

It was only a matter of time. If you saw the July 1 New York Times Magazine cover story on the California governor's race, chances are you paused over this insouciant notable quotable from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who apparently isn't letting his state's financial meltdown get to him:

"Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don't walk out of here depressed," Schwarzenegger told the Times' Mark Leibovich. "I will sit down in my jacuzzi tonight. I'm going to lay back with a stogie."

Sounds nice, doesn't it? But before you make this your new Facebook quote, be warned that not all delighted in this particular cup of chicken soup for the wealthy and powerful soul. Particularly displeased were state union leaders, who are now organizing Wednesday rallies in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno to highlight what San Francisco Labor Council Political Director Amber Parrish says was the callousness of the governor's remarks.

Unlike a BART train, a BART strike is better never than late.

The nastiness level of the atmosphere surrounding BART's negotiations with its six unions may have gone up a notch -- the train operators' union has responded to management's insinuations that they're a bunch of overpaid schlubs by posting a photo of BART's chief spokesman dressed as a large fruit on the union Web site. Still, you can ride the rails this week without fear of getting stranded in Pittsburg for good. Until Friday, at least.

Jesse Hunt, the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local No. 1555 said that, no matter what the outcome of this week's contract votes, the earliest possible strike date would be next week. His union's membership is scheduled to cast its votes tomorrow while the much larger SEIU Local No. 1021 will vote Thursday. The two unions represent about two-thirds of BART's unionized employees.

Following the two votes -- and it's a good bet both unions will give the thumbs-down -- "All parties agreed we would contact the state mediators again to schedule additional meetings with the management side," said Hunt.

See you on the waterfront

This Sunday, July 5, San Francisco's International Longshore and Warehouse Union will hold a procession to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Bloody Thursday, the clash between police and striking longshoremen during the city's 1934 General Strike that led to a permanent local rift between cops and stevedores.

The San Francisco Labor Council is also going to be joining in the festivities, and is spreading the word about the event through its e-mail list. When we got one such e-mail, we couldn't help thinking that this landmark anniversary falls at a time when a renewed split between cops and the rest of local labor is deepening.

The new source of tension is the Labor Council's decision to support a group of former Black Liberation Army radicals charged with murdering San Francisco Police Sgt. John V. Young during an attack on the Ingleside police station in 1971. In May, San Francisco Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes lambasted the council for passing a resolution urging that charges against the men be dropped.

It'll take more than waving a sign to keep ink out of the future Chronicle printing plant

Rome Aloise, the principal officer of the Teamsters Local 853 calls to inform SF Weekly that his union continues to picket outside the massive Fremont printing plant that will soon have copies of the San Francisco Chronicle rolling off its presses. Roughly 300 union drivers and mailers lost their jobs as a result of the Chron moving its printing facilities to the non-union plant, which is operated by Montreal-based Transcontinental, Inc. 

Aloise confirmed a rumor SF Weekly had heard -- out of sympathy for the union picketers, fellow union drivers had refused to deliver ink to the giant plant. When you're operating a printing plant large enough to serve as an airplane hangar, however, you tend to have a few extra barrels of ink lying around -- and Aloise added that non-union drivers have been brought on to deliver the ink.

Earlier this year, Aloise told us that, if editions of the Chronicle began rolling off Transcontinental's non-union presses -- which is scheduled to happen in the next week or two -- the full weight of the Teamsters would be directed toward the flagging paper:

The ongoing pissing contest between the firefighters union and the progressive wing of the Board of Supervisors escalated to the point that they could put out a fire on their own today. The supes released a survey of Bay Area fire departments stating that San Francisco's firefighters work the fewest hours of anyone locally but earn near top dollar.

The survey, commissioned by the Board, noted that San Francisco firefighters' average work week is 48.7 hours -- the lowest among 14 other nearby fire departments, which worked 55 hours per week, on average. Yet despite the shorter work week, city firefighters earned the third-highest yearly salary at $98,670 (Santa Clara firefighters took home $114,576 and Oakland's earn $100,989). San Francisco's firefighters earn the highest per-hour wage at $42.86 per.

Considering the supes earlier proposed drastic cuts to the fire department budget and chided the firefighters union for not offering any give-backs this year -- it's easy to see where this is going.

A message left for firefighter's union president John Hanley has not yet been returned.

Read the survey here: Survey.xls

Sgt. John V. Young

If leftist supervisors sought to show the world that their sympathy for a group of alleged cop-killers in San Francisco was more than a zany political stunt, they have done themselves no favors with a new resolution that links the men's arrest to the Bush Administration, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib.

The resolution, which will be reviewed this afternoon by the supes' Government Audit and Oversight Committee, urges California Attorney General (and presumed 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Jerry Brown to drop all charges. Sponsoring the legislation are supervisors Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell, Ross Mirkarimi, and Chris Daly.

Expect plenty of blowback on this one from the San Francisco Police Officers Association, whose president, Gary Delagnes, has already proclaimed that supervisors backing the so-called San Francisco Eight are "spitting in the face of every cop in San Francisco." The men are charged in the 1971 shotgun killing of Sgt. John V. Young during an attack on the Ingleside Police station.

The Ingleside police station, where Sgt. John V. Young was killed in 1971

The president of San Francisco's police union railed against supervisors Eric Mar and Sophie Maxwell today for their sponsorship of a resolution asking that charges be dropped against the seven men charged with killing a city police sergeant in 1971.

Gary Delagnes of the San Francisco Police Officers Association said the resolution, which he characterized as "idiotic," is "going to send a pretty devastating message to the members of the police department."

Delagnes said, "What it says to the cops is, 'You can kill a cop, and 40 years pass, and it doesn't matter anymore.' My answer to that is, 'Would Jewish people accept that for the Holocaust? Would African-American people accept that for the KKK?'"

At Guantanamo, hunger strikes don't end early

This just in from the San Francisco Labor Council: Apparently a group of workers have broken off their fast at Sen. Dianne Feinstein's local office on Post Street. The workers' hunger strike was the latest in a series of local events and rallies organized by labor interests in an effort to push Feinstein to commit to supporting the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act.

The details of what happened are still sketchy, but Rachele Huennekens of the Service Employees International Union tells us that the group, which had planned on ending their fast this evening, felt their goals had been accomplished and broke off for some chow after a staffer from Feinstein's office came down and chatted with them. "From what I hear, it was a very positive meeting," Huennekens said. She added that SEIU's own representative at the fast, Allen Newland, a security officer at Kaiser Permanente's South Sacramento facility, broke off at his scheduled midday time. "There was nothing early" about the end to his vigil, she said.

Well, nothing to whet the appetite like a friendly chat with a senatorial aide. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, these folks will have had on Feinstein's vote on the bill.

Photo by publik15.

Jack Henning

Labor leader Jack Henning, the president of the state's AFL-CIO from 1970 to 1996 and the man credited with helping pass bills that gave farm workers and government employees the right to form unions and strike, died today at his home in San Francisco. He was 93. According to a press release from the California Labor Federation, Henning, a former U.S. undersecretary of labor and ambassador to New Zealand, was among the first American labor leaders to make opposition to racism a worker's rights cause.

The most significant change that developed in the world of organized labor during Henning's long California reign is that the most successful unions transformed from industrial outfits into lobbying organizations. His press-release obit reflects this. There's nothing like, "AFL-CIO organized Wal-Mart," or a warm remembrance of the how farm laborers gained a middle-class wage thanks to a statewide collective bargaining agreement. 

Rather, the California union's homage of its long-serving chief is about advances achieved through statehouse, rather than workplace, politicking. In the 1930s, when Henning entered the labor movement, unions were, as a matter of economic fact, on the side of the little guy against big, often oppressive industrial organizations. In 2009, oppressive industrial organizations still abound. But the dramatic shift toward focusing on the public sector has blurred labor organizers' role as the everyman's friend. In Henning's home town of San Francisco, public sector union organizing has meant 2,450 city employees last year made more than $140,000, not including health and retirement benefits or deferred compensation.

It's official: The SEIU Local 1021 this morning announced that its workforce of roughly 11,000 San Francisco employees ratified a wage concessions deal with the city -- staving off more layoffs (for now) and giving the city around $25 million in savings to apply toward some of the myriad cuts in the stark proposed budget.

A full 86.4 percent of the union's workforce opted for the deal -- roughly double the percentage who voted for a doomed, near-identical pact in mid-May. The union's spurning of that deal -- which is excessively sweet as wage concessions go; workers still receive 3.75 percent raises which are made up by additional unpaid days off -- led to Mayor Gavin Newsom dismissing 288 SEIU employees last month. That -- and the ever-sharper focusing of the city and state's dire financial picture -- seems to have induced a change of heart for SEIU employees to take what they could get.

During a city hall press conference late last month, it was noted that the expected savings from this wage concession deal would not be included in the mayor's proposed budget, which was already on its way to the printers. The deal -- again, pretty sweet as concessions go -- also accomplishes other goals near-and-dear to the SEIU's heart:

For the SEIU Local 1021, it may be time to paraphrase The Who: Meet the new wage concessions package, same as the old wage concessions package. Specific details for the deal weren't immediately available -- the bargain was only cut in the wee hours this morning -- but the major pillars of the agreement appear to be virtually identical to the wage concession package the SEIU rank and file shockingly voted down last week.The big difference is, after today, there will be 288 fewer workers to vote on the deal.

SEIU officials promised that the nitty gritty of the plan -- which will supposedly save the city $35 million -- will be posted on their Web site sometime this afternoon. In the meantime, the major points told to the press at a noon City Hall press conference mirrored the last deal: The roughly 11,000 workers in the city's largest union still get the 3.75 raise that kicked in on April 4, but give up 10 furlough days over the next two years. The ratification vote commences on June 1, and SEIU leadership has already started educational meetings at workers' offices. But you don't need seminar from a union official in a purple shirt to know the city means business -- especially if you're an SEIU employee in the Department of Public Health or Parks and Recreation Department, which the Friday layoffs hit hard.

While the SEIU is banking that ratifying the deal will save the 700 and change other jobs Mayor Gavin Newsom put on the chopping block, it only may be a postponing of the inevitable. Newsom spokesman Nathan Ballard -- tall, camera-ready, and sporting a beard that equips him to walk directly into a community theater presentation of Much Ado About Nothing and portray Don John -- praised SEIU leadership and encouraged ratification, but confirmed there is no guarantee that ratification will stave off future layoffs. "If they ratify, we hope to minimize layoffs in the future," he said, a statement that commits the mayor to absolutely nothing.

Following the spurning of a wage concession package that would have saved the city some $38 million -- and, ostensibly, 1,000 SEIU city workers their jobs -- union officials have announced a noon City Hall press conference detailing a new pact with the city.

Details are unavailable -- and, if we were betting folks we'd guess it's not as generous as the former agreement. Also, this deal (like the last) requires a yes vote from the roughly 11,000 SEIU Local 1021members.

Many seem to be complaining that union leadership did not actively sell the rank-and-file on this wage concession (which still called for a 3.75 percent raise!) and the potential draconian consequences of a no vote.

Let's also bet that doesn't happen again. 

James Duncan Davidson

A sign of the times...

The State Employment Development Department today released its monthly accounting of where the state's employment handbasket is in its journey toward hell. And it's a good news-bad news situation akin to: "We've got fresh vegetables -- but we're serving them for dessert."

So, the unemployment totals are down from last month and, as always, significantly better than the state at large. That's the good news. The lousy news is that the numbers are still ugly, way worse than last year at this time, and don't seem to be anything to build on.

Anyhow, here's some data: San Francisco County's unemployment rate sits at 8.8 percent -- a full 2 percent lower than the state average of 10.9 percent. The overall unemployment rate for the San Francisco region dropped from 8.6 to 8.3 percent between March and April, and we gained 500 jobs, pushing our total to 962,100 (this is not a significant gain, obviously, but the big news is we're not losing). If you're in any of the following fields, perhaps this was your lucky month:

Gary Delagnes

When the SEIU dropped a bombshell on the city's budget last week -- while riding that bombshell, Slim Pickens-style -- observers wondered if it would induce an ill-timed tsunami of churlishness among city unions. After all, if the biggest union in town decides it's not doing wage concessions, maybe the smaller guilds would drop out as well.

Well, the police aren't going anywhere (which is good because they've got guns and are here to protect us). Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes confirmed that his union will not be seeking to alter the terms of a wage concession deal in which the cops will hand back $16.7 million in deferments and monetary benefits over the next two years. As for the SEIU -- well, here's how Delagnes put that:

"When we [signed our deal], the expectation was that SEIU would try to save their own necks. In my opinion, they've basically picked up a gun and shot themselves in the head," he said of the SEIU Local 1021 -- which stands to lose 1,000 or more city jobs after spurning its negotiating team's wage concession offer. "Personally, from the outside looking in, there's got to be really weak leadership to let that union take that position. They're looking at some pretty serious layoffs. It looks like we did more to save their jobs than they did -- we gave $17 million back to save jobs and it looks like they're just not willing. They're the ones who'll lose their jobs; public safety was never under the threat of layoffs."