Photo Miguel Vaca CC BY 2.0

Last night, SEIU 1021 members and their allies in labor and community forced the Council to pass a law protecting thousands of workers citywide from last-minute reduction or addition of unwanted shifts. The law also bans unwanted clopening shifts, and critically, requires employers to offer additional hours to part-time workers before hiring new part-time employees.

Berkeley’s Management Practices Echo Those of Oppressive Corporations

The City of Berkeley, despite its reputation in the media as being a progressive bastion, has long subjected hundreds of low-wage workers in Parks Recreation & Waterfront, Library, Public Works, HHCS and other departments to deliberately uncertain part-time schedules not unlike the most exploitative practices at Starbucks and McDonald’s. And at the same time the City has looked the other way as those same private sector employers continue to exploit additional thousands of workers within its borders.

Recreation Workers Elevated This Issue to the Forefront of Bargaining

In 2021, our R-2 Part-time Recreation Leaders elevated this issue to the forefront of an intense and frustrating bargaining cycle. Workers fought for and won from the City Management the right to pay for shifts canceled after 9:30 pm the prior evening due to weather, natural disaster, or local emergency. Despite the disappointment of its limited scope, the campaign for this contract provision shed light on the most fundamental questions of power, mental well-being, and survival in our workplaces.

Workers Organize Broad Coalition to Overcome Intense Filibustering

Radicalized by the City’s refusal to grant part-time workers the most basic rights, and in solidarity with co-workers, City of Berkeley workers looked to legislation as a way to improve the lives of workers and move forward on unfinished business from the bargaining table. In late 2021, they formed a coalition to revive a proposal for Fair Workweek legislation, inspired by a law in neighboring Emeryville that had been languishing at the Labor Commission for years. They succeeded in pressuring the Commission to prioritize a similar law as part of their work plan.

Since it passed out of the Commission in early 2022, City Management and a majority of Councilmembers teamed up to crush its chances of becoming law at every turn using procedural maneuvers, filibustering, attempts to carve out thousands of private sector healthcare workers and restaurant staff, and delay tactics ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. And throughout, City management refused to engage with it seriously, only providing wildly inflated numbers, empty excuses and veiled threats about canceling programs. All this gave ample space for business interests to try to kill the law for its lack of specificity in terms of impact on City finances.

Despite these obstacles, the coalition drove workers and community members to apply pressure by making calls, submitting public comments and circulating petitions in support. Their advocacy and organizing efforts overcame fierce opposition from business interests, lobbyists, and anti-worker Commissioners and Councilmembers, forcing the Mayor to finally call a special meeting last night.

The ordinance passed last night with a 7-2 vote with two Councilmembers conspicuously absent from the most significant labor vote in nearly a decade. Providing ‘predictability pay’ for City workers will make a meaningful difference in the lives of workers and is projected to cost the City so little it is no more per year than a year or two of the City Manager’s new pay increase.

An Inspiration for Continued Organizing

The new law, which takes effect in one year, will provide protections for both City and private sector workers throughout Berkeley. It marks the opening of a new chapter in a re-invigorated rank and file movement to build and use grassroots worker power against exploitation and justice.

Critically, this process has revealed the soft underbelly of the oppressive systems and structures that seek to keep workers and communities divided. The prime lesson from this fight is that pressure backed by worker power and community solidarity works. As City workers escalate their efforts to deeply organize their worksites in response to ongoing injustices and future fights, we will not soon forget the results of workers united in demanding change; this is but a prelude to what collective worker action can achieve.