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As a mayoral candidate, Daniel Lurie had it all — unlimited money, an outsider message that resonated with voters, and a well-run campaign team. But there was something missing from his well-stacked arsenal in 2024: union support.
Now his inexperience with unions is biting him in the Levi’s.
A teachers strike began Monday after the district and union failed to reach an agreement. | Source: Manuel Orbegozo for The Standard
San Francisco teachers are now picketing for the first time in 47 years, and 50,000 children have no school for the foreseeable future. The next bargaining session between the union and the district was set for noon on Monday.
Though Lurie has issued social media pronouncements encouraging the sides to hash out a deal, he has made it clear that he’s more observer than active participant.
“I’m not in the weeds in the negotiations,” Lurie said Monday. “I don’t think that’s my role.”
That’s consistent with the role he played in a previous labor dispute. When Lurie was on the cusp of inauguration, in December 2024, he was widely credited with helping to end a hotel workers strike. He reportedly did so by calling Marriott leadership, breaking a three-month logjam.
Lurie should be credited for picking up the phone to reach elites who wouldn’t respond to the rank and file, said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council.
But when it came to ending the dispute, “the fact that we were on strike for 97 days had a lot to do with it.”
Casey said Lurie has made school district negotiations a priority, despite SFUSD being a state entity outside of the city’s purview. The mayor has said he’s offered support to Superintendent Maria Su.
“He’s not sleeping on this,” Casey said.
Charles Lutvak, a spokesperson for the mayor, said, “Since he ended a three-month hotel strike before even taking office, Mayor Lurie has had an open door and worked productively with unions across the city to make San Francisco work for working families. He’s doing the same thing right now, bringing UESF and SFUSD to the table to support our educators and get school back open for our kids.”
He added, “Mayor Lurie was elected because San Franciscans knew it was time to change a system that has only worked for the people who knew how to game it. San Francisco’s working families deserve a government that works hard every day for them, and that’s exactly what Mayor Lurie and his entire administration is doing.”
As the prospect of a teachers strike grew, Lurie dispatched his policy chief, Kunal Modi, to help out, to no avail. A source said the mayor’s office has also brought in Steve Kawa, who served as chief of staff to former mayors Gavin Newsom and Ed Lee and deputy chief of staff for Willie Brown, to help with negotiations.
Past mayors were personally involved in mediation between the SFUSD and the union, according to former UESF president Susan Solomon. “[London] Breed and Newsom made attempts and were sometimes successful,” she said. Despite an often rocky relationship with the union, Breed even placed a measure on the ballot to secure raises for educators by introducing new taxes (opens in new tab).
There’s another reason Lurie may be having a tough time dealing with labor issues: None of his policy chiefs has a deep background in the movement. Modi, for example, has little hands-on experience tussling with unions, having come from McKinsey & Company, the blue-chip corporate consultancy. Others in Lurie’s top policy circles include Ned Segal, his housing and economic development chief and a former Twitter executive, and Staci Slaughter, his chief of staff and a former Giants executive.
Sources say public affairs director Han Zou is usually the link between the Lurie administration and labor — but he is a young up-and-comer at City Hall. He’s no battle-scarred Kawa or Sean Elsbernd, Breed’s former chief of staff. By contrast, some of the labor officials have been sitting at the table with mayors for decades.
Lurie has surrounded himself with allies of business, a world that has traditionally clashed with labor unions. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
Lurie does have some union people in his circle; namely, SEIU 87’s Olga Miranda and UFCW5’s Jim Araby. But the pair aren’t involved in public-sector employee matters. Miranda represents janitors, while Araby represents grocery workers — different worlds entirely.
John Logan, a professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University, said some in the labor movement feel Lurie hasn’t offered much to earn their support.
“My impression is that Lurie’s pretty clueless” when it comes to dealing with labor, Logan said, adding that the mayor “feels no pressure to understand it because he thinks unions are irrelevant or dinosaurs or both.”
“The teachers strike could either serve as a wake-up call or it could just reinforce his views that unions in general, and public-sector unions in particular, have too much power and are an obstacle to his pro-business, anti-regulation agenda,” Logan added.
This sentiment is reinforced by the types of allies with which Lurie has surrounded himself. The mayor has pitched himself as a friend to business interests and has pushed for deregulatory policies he believes will make life easier for city residents. His philanthropic ventures aimed at repairing the city’s economy include some of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful corporate figures, worlds that have traditionally clashed with labor unions.
A teachers strike may be a harbinger of more painful labor battles to come.
Lurie will have to navigate painful City Hall layoffs in response to a $936 million budget deficit. That battle is already causing strife within the labor movement (opens in new tab). Last week, San Francisco Building and Construction Trades leader Rudy Gonzalez resigned from the Public Employees Committee as the top public-sector unions, IFPTE 21 and SEIU 1021, are expected to wage a holy war against the possibility of pink slips.
Then there are the union-backed city and state business taxes on the ballot, which stand in stark contrast to the mayor’s corporate-friendly approach to San Francisco’s economic recovery. Last month, Lurie said he opposed the California Billionaire Tax Act because it would scare businesses away from the city. On Friday, Lurie said he would not support the local Overpaid CEO Act (opens in new tab) — nor would he back a competing measure from the pro-business camp. He said the labor-versus-business war is bad for everyone.
Lurie’s opposition to both measures actually helps the unions’ Overpaid CEO Act — without his support, the business-backed measure plays with a weaker hand.
And don’t forget his quest to reform the city charter, which might make it harder to place measures on the ballot. Labor representatives on the charter reform working group have pushed back on this idea, arguing that it would hinder the ability of working-class interests to put measures before voters.
So far, Lurie has been vexed by unions at every turn. Maybe he should just unionize the mayor’s office and get it over with?