San Francisco criminal and civil court clerks \u2013 the people who manage court records, process court filings and prepare court orders \u2013 are going on strike on Thursday after complaining for months of overwhelming workloads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A \u201clast-ditch effort to find a resolution\u201d between the clerk\u2019s union and court management failed on Wednesday afternoon, criminal courtroom clerk Rob Borders told Mission Local.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clerks first threatened to strike<\/a> four months ago. Their demands have not changed: They want more staff and better training to handle the influx of criminal cases<\/a> that have doubled their workload. The number of new misdemeanor<\/a> and felony<\/a> cases filed in San Francisco Superior Court has outpaced the number of cases resolved nearly every month for the last two years.<\/p>\n The clerk\u2019s union last week reiterated the consequences if their demands are not met, writing in a statement that \u201cgross mismanagement\u201d has led to delays and errors that have prevented defendants\u2019 timely release.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been aware of more instances where someone is not released when the court ordered them released than I have in the 10 years I\u2019ve worked at the court,\u201d Borders wrote. \u201cWe have tried everything in our power to get management to work with us to fix this, to no avail.\u201d<\/p>\n The clerks\u2019 union has been in negotiations since September, according to civil court clerk Kimberly Septein, the SEIU 1021 San Francisco Superior Court chapter president. At the beginning of October, an overwhelming majority of union members voted to strike for the second time in two years.<\/p>\n The threat of picket lines outside the Hall of Justice last October was staved off by negotiations with management in the 11th hour. But it was a tenuous agreement on \u201cterms that don\u2019t really address the issues,\u201d Borders said at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Court management promised clerks a two percent annual raise, less than the annual three percent U.S. inflation rate, and \u201congoing meetings\u201d after the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the court in October. In the following months, underlying issues of chronic short staffing were not resolved through mediation, according to members of the clerks\u2019 bargaining team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Court clerks began picketing outside both the civil and criminal courts last week to warn that a strike was brewing. Their representatives met with court management on Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n This time around, bargaining teams reached an impasse. Clerks say they will begin forming a picket line around the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant at 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning. before moving to the civil courthouse at 400 McAllister. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco criminal and civil court clerks \u2013 the people who manage court records, process court filings and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-193916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}