SF teachers, district reach deal after all-night bargaining session — strike averted

San Francisco public school teachers and the school district bargained through the night before reaching a tentative contract agreement, averting the possibility of the city’s first teacher walkout since 1979. 

The bargaining session started at 5 p.m. on Thursday. “We just signed a deal,” read a text from United Educators San Francisco president Cassondra Curiel at 5:43 a.m. on Friday. The specifics of the deal have not yet been announced.

This nascent pact staves off a nightmare scenario of children unable to learn, parents unable to work and teachers unable to earn a living. But a crippling teacher strike could’ve easily cascaded into a major issue affecting far wider swaths of the city than the relatively meager number of public school families. In short: Failure for the teachers and district to reach terms would’ve led to the likely implosion of a proposed $1 billion school bond proposed for March of next year — and could’ve quickly led to a larger conflagration with organized labor on the cusp of what promises to be a contentious series of citywide negotiations in 2024.

Everyone, on both sides of the negotiating table, knew these stakes. The teachers union, in fact, had ratcheted up the pressure by explicitly calling for a second and final strike vote if an accord was not reached at this bargaining session. And even sources within the San Francisco Unified School District had acknowledged long before tonight’s outcome that it was the teachers who held all the cards and had all the leverage. Superintendent Matt Wayne was informed of this in no uncertain terms. 

An overriding factor motivating the teachers was the years-long EMPowerSF payroll debacle, in which district employees were unpaid, underpaid and mispaid with oft-disastrous consequences. This enraged and, in essence, radicalized the district’s workforce. That came at a time, nationally, when unionized labor, in both the private and public sector, has taken to more militantly asserting itself. 

But this was not a movement driven by radicals: The state of California itself, in a July ruling, gutted San Francisco’s 1970s-era rules forbidding public-sector-employee strikes.  

So that was a coalescence of factors that put the school district on its back foot in negotiating sessions: Workers, in general, are increasingly up for agitation — and, specific to San Francisco Public School employees, the workforce has been goaded into a state of extreme agitation. SFUSD workers are angry: Both labor and management sources noted that there were an appreciable number of district employees who’d be in favor of a strike even if they got all of their demands and more. The district, again, knew this. And so did the teachers’ union negotiators — there was little incentive for them to budge on their asks. In fact, anything but a deal closely resembling their initial demands would have likely been drop-kicked by the fired-up membership (details of the initial pact are, again, forthcoming). 

Also, remember that failure to reach a deal at tonight’s session would’ve triggered a second strike vote from the teachers. The results of their first strike vote: 97 percent approval. The results of an earlier strike vote from SEIU-backed custodians, cafeteria workers and others: 99 percent. These are the sorts of numbers that light a fire beneath management negotiators; following the 99-percent strike vote, bargaining sessions between the SEIU and district morphed from languid affairs spaced far apart to highly productive near-daily sessions. Of note, this was the second session between the district and United Educators of San Francisco this week. 

The SEIU and the district inked a tentative deal late Tuesday night. This morning’s deal with the teachers, albeit belated, was the logical outcome. 

And that’d be the case just within the microcosm of labor relations within the school district. But this was never so self-contained an issue. This, too, was known to all parties. And this, too, surely played a role in today’s outcome. 

Outside factors

It’s all fun and games until somebody loses $1 billion. 

This was yet another complicating factor hovering over the ongoing stalemate between the district and its employees: San Francisco Unified has made it clear that it wants to finalize a massive, $1 billion school bond for the March 2024 ballot by Nov. 14. That’s right around the corner, and a labor disruption would essentially sink this bond upon launch. Or even prevent that launch. 

It is nigh-inconceivable that this bond, which requires a 55 percent vote, will pass without union support. And while it was far-fetched to imagine unions actively opposing a school bond — who do you think would be doing the work it authorized? — that doesn’t mean they have to go out of their way to support it. 

Both labor leaders and district officials have told me that this bond will be dead on arrival without significant union backing. It may yet lose, but today’s tentative resolution at least prevented the bond from being nipped in the bud. 

(An aside: Are there still questions about earmarking $1 billion for facilities before deciding what facilities may yet be closed? Yes. The planned major revamping of the district’s enrollment system has the potential to transform the placement of students across the city — students from Bayview, for example, might actually be more likely to be placed in neighborhood schools, which are presently underenrolled. Is this something you’d hope to suss out before deciding which schools to fix, not fix or potentially discard? Also yes.) 

So, the district had one billion reasons to reach a deal with its teachers. But this went beyond money. A series of interconnected labor alliances reminiscent of World War I could’ve rapidly blown this dispute up into a large and noisy conflagration — and served as a potential precursor for what’s to come in 2024. 

Even with the SEIU having scored an earlier deal, and the UESF rounding third, a small cadre of some 80 SFUSD gardeners, glaziers and others recently also recently authorized a strike over contested back pay. And if these workers opted to picket school sites, their union brethren would’ve honored that. 

It was also lost on none of the participants in the district-teachers bargaining sessions that the heads of the building trades, the Local 21 and SEIU 1021 unions, are also the co-chairs of the public employee committee, the consortium of 26 unions gearing up to renegotiate their city contracts next year. 

Next year’s San Francisco budget promises to be a nightmare, with Mayor London Breed already calling for mid-year pare-backs while gearing up for a re-election campaign of her own. 

This year’s teacher strike could’ve become a de-facto dress rehearsal for potential mass walkouts next year, and a proxy war in which labor could’ve tested its strength heading into 2024. 

So, this morning’s tentative pact forestalls all of this. Next year promises to be a strange and terrible one. But, mercifully, that’s once again a problem for next year.  

Update: Here are some specifics on the terms of the tentative pact:

The tentative agreement includes a $9,000 salary increase for teachers in the 2023-2024 school year. Teachers will also receive an additional 5% raise for the 2024-2025 school year, which will be phased in and be in full effect by January 2025. The tentative agreement will also provide additional stipends for hard-to-staff positions for social workers, nurses and special education teachers. Paraeducators will receive a minimum starting salary of $30/hour or an 8% raise, whichever is greater for school year 2023-24. For 2024-25, paraeducators will receive an additional 5% salary increase for the 2024-2025 school year, which will be phased in and be in full effect by January 2025.