Category: UFCLP Statements

STOP Privatization, Outsourcing and Union Busting!

Time to Unite All Public Workers to Protect Public Services and Public Education

Hundreds of millions of dollars in San Francisco are being moved out of public jobs by City bosses and into the hiring of consultants, billion-dollar tech companies and “non-profits”. This plan is to permanently outsource these jobs and fundamentally undermine our public services.

Mayor Breed, her chief of staff Sean Elsbernd, and DHR instituted a hiring freeze that has been used during the pandemic to accelerate the destruction of public jobs and public services. The hundreds of millions of dollars received from the Federal and State government has been spent on outsourcing our public workers and making new workers temporary TEX workers. This also pits these workers against public workers which is what the bosses want.

Part and parcel of this attack is the destruction of civil service. The SF Civil Service Commission has been voting unanimously to outsource thousands of jobs without asking the question of why City workers cannot do those jobs and has also colluded with the privatizers in destroying seniority and qualifications for jobs by stalling on tests or letting them lapse. The continuing racist discrimination & retaliations are part this attack on our public service jobs and will escalate with outsourcing and privatization.

Our unions need to challenge the outsourcing of jobs at this commission instead of accepting this outsourcing.

This has also encouraged corruption, nepotism, and the real destruction of quality public services. The present systemic corruption crisis in San Francisco is a direct result of this privatization and outsourcing policies by
the mayor’s cronies and billionaires who benefit from unlimited privatization.

WE need to have a united political education campaign to educate all working people and the public about how these policies are wrecking the city. From the privatization of Golden Gate Park with the non-profits, to health services, all departments are on the chopping block by billionaires and non-profits who are taking over public services. DHR, the Civil Service Commission, and the Mayor are also allowing META, Salesforce, and EPIC to have unlimited funding for their take-over of City services and union-busting.

The so-called Business Districts are also turning public jobs into low-income substandard wages in these privately run districts with no oversight by the city. These non-union workers are not being paid living wages much less jobs
with public service benefits. This must end and these workers need to be transferred into public jobs doing the same work they are already doing.

The organized destruction of public services is also taking place at HealthRight 360 which has been allowed by the union leadership to set up a statewide alternative health system which is siphoning off of tens of thousands of patients into a two-tier system. Worker’s wages and benefits are far below public workers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities.

The use of “non-profits” to privatize public services is also what is going on with charter schools in California. KIPP, Rocketship, and other billionaire-controlled charter school chains are destroying public schools and setting up a two-tier education system. Charters are growing as Newsom, Tony Thurmond and the Democrats close public schools in Oakland and other communities.

The privatizers are also wrecking San Francisco City College, laying off faculty & staff, shutting campuses, and selling off land to them at cut-rate prices like the Balboa Reservoir which was sold to Avalon.

We need a united public workers’ education campaign about these policies and work to end them with a new charter law outlawing outsourcing and privatization in CCSF and similar anti-privatization language in the State of California constitution. This also requires the formation of a democratic labor party. The Democratic party is carrying out the privatization and outsourcing here in San Francisco and throughout the state.

The failure of having healthcare for all in California and even proper PPE for all workers as well as a mass testing protocol, and fully paid time off for workers with Covid is also a direct result of the billionaires running the state through the Democratic Party.

With 77 billionaires in San Francisco and 170 billionaires in California, we can and must make them pay the cost of this crisis instead of benefiting from it as Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others are doing.

United Front Committee For A Labor Party

(www.ufclp.org info@ufclp.org)