SEIU 1021 saves members' SF Redevelopment jobs

The significance of this can only be grasped by the numbers. San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency is the City’s number one job creator, the number one creator of affordable housing, and the number one creator of new parks for San Francisco.  The employees of the SFRA and the projects they oversee are slated over the next decade to create new public parks and plazas equivalent to a second Golden Gate Park. Just their two largest projects will create 20,000 new San Francisco jobs.  The agency already has created 11,000 units of affordable housing during its tenure.

The Board of Supervisors was poised yesterday to pass legislation phasing out the Redevelopment Agency according to new state law. That legislation mandated that the Agency’s employees be laid off, including 45 SEIU 1021 members. New staff would be hired to finish their work—presumably at a lower compensation.

SEIU 1021 talked with the bill’s author, Supervisor Malia Cohen, and a couple of her co-sponsors and pointed out that they could keep the same experienced staff, keep the projects moving without disruption, save the expense of the hiring process and do it all for less. The state law dissolving Redevelopment Agencies allows the successor agencies charged with completing projects in process to pay staff working on them with the same tax increment monies that have always funded Redevelopment Agencies. But if the city fired the existing staff and hired new employees, they would have to be paid through the General Fund, which is already running a deficit.

The entire Board of Supervisors, having been enlightened by the union, agreed unanimously to do the fiscally responsible thing, passing Cohen’s bill with amendments keeping the jobs for SEIU 1021 members.