On Tuesday, more than a hundred SF Public Library and other city workers rallied outside of the city’s main branch to demand the hiring of more security guards.
San Francisco city workers have suffered from a hiring crisis for years: right now, there are almost 4,000 government positions waiting to be filled. These vacancies leave those who do work for the city under-resourced and overburdened.
The issue is particularly acute at the city’s various library branches, where employees work not only as librarians, but also as social workers, caretakers, and even security guards.
Nicole Termini Germain is the branch manager and children’s librarian at the Portola branch library. She spoke at Tuesday’s rally about the challenges she’s had to face filling so many roles at once.
“So, one day, it was a typical day after, after school, we had a multitude of children coming in. As I was doing my rounds, you know, in my security duty, I noticed a half-dressed man, mentally unstable, wielding, not a book, but a weapon.”
Fortunately, she was able to de-escalate the situation, and the city has since placed a security guard at the Portola branch, but there are still more than a dozen SF branches without guards. Here’s Nicole again.
“So what do we need? We need a guard in every branch! We have — yes — We have been fighting for this since 2019. We have spoken to the Board of Supervisors. We have brought this to labor management. We've brought it to bargaining three times.”
Right now, the unions are in the middle of contract negotiations with the city. Various sectors are asking for various things, but almost everyone is frustrated with the city’s hiring process.
Kristin Hardy is the regional Vice President of SEIU-1021, she said the city’s hiring process can take up to a year.
“And by that time, by the time you call the applicant, they've already accepted a job somewhere else. So it's just a revolving cycle, which causes the vacancy to go on longer and longer.”
According to the union, rather than speed up the hiring process, the city prioritizes working with private contractors, which tend to be more expensive.
“We have some contracts that we've identified through Department of Public Health that are over like $24 million — that's been going on since 2014 — just keep getting renewed, renewed, renewed, because of the staffing problem.”
A 2023 SF Civil Grand Jury report made several recommendations to solve these issues, but the city has yet to follow them.
In March, city employees rallying outside of the Human Services Agency protested this same issue, but that time, it was about contracting out services for Prop F.
Contract negotiations are supposed to end sometime next week.
