

Some 300 personnel from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic are on strike nowadays, demanding an enhance in wages.
“No contract, no peace,” the group shouted outside the house the Section of Homelessness and Supportive Companies offices alongside Turk Street this early morning. Just after eight months of deal negotiations, numerous mentioned they felt “pushed” to strike since of a absence of clarity close to pay raises.
The Tenderloin Housing Clinic is a assets management nonprofit that maintains around 2,000 very affordable units during 24 tasks in the town, predominantly for formerly homeless tenants. That features five in the Mission, such as San Francisco’s major SRO lodge, Mission Resort. The nonprofit acquired above $33 million in city funding final fiscal 12 months to present housing for some of the city’s most difficult-up denizens, and to give providers these as scenario management.
Currently, occupation listings on the clinic’s site set the hourly fork out for desk clerks and janitors at $17.34 ($36,067 per year) and $20.92 for ($43,514 yearly) situation staff. Bare minimum wage in San Francisco is $16.99.
Andria Blackmon, a situation employee for the nonprofit, said that she needed a return to the wages noticed from July 2020 to March 2021, when every staff received an more $5 for every hour in Covid hazard pay back. Blackmon, who has had four supervisors throughout her two-and-a-half a long time in the task, stated that an increase would support assure great solutions for tenants, make improvements to workers’ excellent of life, and reduce turnover.
“We’re actually struggling. You know, we’re borrowing cash from every single other, we’re providing each other rides,” said Blackmon. “We just seem to be to constantly stop up shorter.”
Emmanuel White, a desk clerk, claimed that wages had been presently far too lower taking into consideration how challenging it is to deal with problematic tenants and provided the skills employees introduced to their roles.
“You’ve acquired a scenario manager earning $20 an hour – with a degree – but you have obtained people at McDonald’s generating perhaps $18 an hour with no diploma,” reported White. “Yeah, that just really do not seem to be suitable.”
According to In truth.com, the common income for a circumstance supervisor in San Francisco is $25.43 for each hour, appreciably larger than the nonprofit’s circumstance personnel.
The lion’s share of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s funding will come from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Randy Shaw, founder and executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, stated that he agrees that his staff need to have an across-the-board pay back raise, but that raises are dependent on the funding received from the division.
“This has all appear down to what the department decides,” claimed Shaw. He extra that the $5 for each hour wage improve had not been mentioned at prior negotiations, but that he experienced advocated for the supportive housing department to nail down their proposed wage rises as before long as attainable, and to make them as higher as possible.
The most recent proposals would see desk clerks paid $19 to 21 for each hour, janitors paid out $20 to 22 per hour, and case employees paid out somewhere concerning $25 and 28 for each hour. The new ranges for some work, these types of as all those associated in transitional housing, have not nevertheless been clarified, leading to worries that some workers could possibly be remaining driving in negotiations.
Evan Oravec, a local community organizer for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and SEIU 1021 chapter president, reported that anything at all significantly less than locking in the upper restrictions of these ranges would be “disrespectful and present that they’re not using this problem significantly.”
“The process, with our pay as very low as it is, is slipping aside,” reported Oravec. “With inflation as substantial as it is, you are looking at large turnover charges, substantial task emptiness fees, burnout. It is very prevalent for workers to have a number of work opportunities, and to commute from as significantly out as Antioch or Sacramento.”
“We voted to strike in May perhaps, and we ended up genuinely hoping that that would send out a signal to the city and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic that we will need true adjust,” he extra. “But sadly, we have arrived at this level.”
In May, staff voted 99 percent to authorize their SEIU 1021-affiliated bargaining crew to phone for a strike if progress was not created.
Some workers at today’s rally felt that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic administration had not advocated strongly ample for wage improves. Blackmon mentioned that irrespective of Shaw saying they really should function collectively to get extra income from the city, he had been absent from the Spending budget Committee hearing attended by the union: “It just appeared like vacant phrases.”
In a press release, SEIU 1021 spokesman Andrew Baker reported that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic administration set ahead “a selection of proposals aimed at undermining their employees’ union rather than addressing office issues” at the start of negotiations. These proposals, considering that dropped, would have intended significantly less union involvement in disciplinary issues and would have designed “insubordination” an straight away fireable offense.
Just after rallying at Turk Street, employees marched on to Town Hall. Several seemed cautiously optimistic that bigger wages will be secured by the union, but nervous that a slight rise may not have a great deal of an impact.
“I believe that the fact that persons in this constructing at times overlook,” claimed District 5 Supervisor (and ex-Tenderloin Housing Clinic tenant defense lawyer) Dean Preston, motioning toward City Hall, “is that you are one particular paycheck away from staying in the exact placement as the customers and the individuals you are battling every single working day to support.”
“That’s unconscionable.”
