SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — More than 200 San Francisco court clerks are on the verge of a strike.
“We feel like the solutions are very simple. We just want them to take it seriously,” said Rob Borders, a San Francisco court clerk.
In 2024, San Francisco court clerks went on a one-day strike. Two years later, their demands are the same.
“We are asking obviously for more staffing. We are asking for more comprehensive and adequate training, not just emails. Not just binders. That’s sort of outlines what a courtroom or what various courtrooms do. Not everyone is the same,” said Ben Thompson a San Francisco court clerk.
Rob Borders and Ben Thompson said they are ready to walk off the job starting Thursday. They say their team is overworked, something that is leading to backlogs and delays.
“For instance, tomorrow, my courtroom alone has, I think, 17 preliminary hearings. And the preliminary hearings, we usually have the time estimate between 25 minutes to one hour and 30 minutes. We just don’t have enough hours in the day,” said Thompson.
“Because of the short staffing, they’ve been unable to adequately train us. So, we get sent to various assignments that some of us are prepared to work on. And the result of that is paperwork errors that caused us to have jail longer than they’re supposed to,” said Borders.
RELATED: Nearly 200 SF court clerks demand solutions to staffing and training issues during 1-day strike
We contacted the San Francisco Superior Court and did not get a response, but on X they said that if an agreement was not reached, “the Court will be open during the SEIU strike with reduced operations that will ensure defendants’ rights are protected and all statutory deadlines are met.”
San Francisco’s Public Defender Mano Raju said he is concerned.
“We’ve been sounding the alarm about this for a long time,” said Public Defender Raju.
The San Francisco Public Defender’s office confirmed there’s been a huge upsurge in active cases, both misdemeanor and felony cases in San Francisco.
Luz Pena: “If there is a strike, how would this impact cases throughout the city?”
“Well, we are already dealing with that issue in our office. We have a huge uptick in open cases in the public defender’s office. So what’s going to happen is, it’s only going to get probably become worse, because cases will not be processed as quickly,” said Public Defender Raju.
The 2024 deal that ended the strike then included changes to staffing and training but the union said those reforms have “failed to adequately address these issues.”
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