San Francisco’s Mayor Daniel Lurie wants city workers back to the office at least four days a week by April 28, according to a memo obtained by The Real Deal that went out to city department heads today.
Unlike a previous internal memo from the city’s head of Human Resources, which came in January and brought up increasing in-office attendance without many specifics, the mayor appears to have taken a stronger stance. His memo was entitled “Re: In Person Work,” and sent directly to department heads. It calls for a four-day-a-week minimum for in-office attendance for the 30% of city workers still working a hybrid schedule.
The mayor “instructed the Department of Human Resources to take the necessary steps to effectuate this plan, including fulfilling the City’s obligations to notice and discuss the pending change with unions representing affected City workers,” according to the memo. The document also said in-office work provides “critical operational benefits to the City as an employer, as well as in its primary mission in serving the public.”
“That is what San Franciscans expect and what Mayor Lurie will deliver,” said spokesperson Charles Lutvak in a statement. “We look forward to working with our partners across the departments and in labor over the coming weeks to implement the mayor’s plan.”
The mayor’s office has had “good and productive conversations” with the various unions that represent the bulk of the city’s approximately 34,000 employees. Most union contracts run until 2026 or 2027 and allow up to two days of remote work per week, or more with their supervisor’s okay.
The memo says that 24,000 city employees are already back in office five days a week, about 70% of the total. The remaining 30%, who typically work in information technology, accounting, legal services, engineering, human resources, policy and planning, according to the memo, are in-office three days a week. The mayor’s memo said that would continue only for employees with approved reasonable accommodation or Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance requests.
The city’s commercial real estate community has said more city workers in-office would be a boon to downtown, especially retail and restaurants in the hard-hit Civic Center and Mid-Market neighborhoods.
Colliers’ agent John Jensen has said that the Van Ness Corridor, Civic Center and Western SoMa would be most affected by a city worker return, with the increased foot traffic helping out restaurants and shops in the surrounding area. Sales tax revenue was down 12 percent in SoMa between the second quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2024, according to Colliers data, one of just a few markets in the city that has not seen a retail rebound since the depths of the pandemic.
District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents Mid-Market and SoMa, told TRD that he applauds the Mayor’s directive and that having city workers return to the office was “frankly the first thing I urged him to do after his election.”
“As a downtown supervisor, I see every day how the scale of remote work is holding back our economic recovery,” he said. “It’s hard to argue with any moral authority to our large private-sector employers that their workers should come back to the office when many of our own city workers aren’t.”
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Can Daniel Lurie get SF workers back to office full time?