1021 Finally Gets Its Agreement...

The folks at SEIU 1021 had to take a couple of whacks at it, but they finally actually sold the wage concession package to their membership...

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.

The process to avoid further layoffs, notwithstanding this pact, now depends on a "revenue" measure - read as tax hikes - that will go to the ballot this November in San Francisco. Such measures usually have to pass 67-33. It has been done before, but usually for a very narrow focus item, not a citywide budgetary fix.