Taxpayer-paid workers vote to go on strike across California

Economist Wayne Winegarden told The Center Square that the current demands for raise hikes would make things worse in a state with high taxes.

Approximately 96.2% of SEIU Local 1000’s 100,0000 members voted this week to authorize an unfair practice strike for Oct. 21, saying that state officials bargained in bad faith. "SEIU" stands for Service Employees International Union.

Worksite strike lines are scheduled in multiple cities across the state, including five in Sacramento and one each in Oakland, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, Norwalk, San Bernardino and San Diego.

Each strike line is scheduled to start at 7 a.m. on Oct. 21. 

Anica Walls, president of SEIU Local 1000, told The Center Square on Friday that the Newsom administration rejected all of the union’s proposals for the contract renewal.

“Our big-ticket items are general salary increases," Walls said.

Wallis added that the union's proposals include affordable healthcare to meet increased costs and a modernization of work "so we can efficiently and effectively continue to save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars."

But Winegarden, the economist, told The Center Square on Friday that he didn’t find that salary increases are financially sustainable for California’s taxpayers.

“The state has a spending problem,” said Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pasadena, Calif.-based Pacific Research Institute. “If you look at the payment of government workers in California compared to every other state, they’re much better compensated. The idea that they’re striking in order to get 7% increase in pay for the next year and 20% over three years, these are unaffordable increases that if the state acquiesces, it’s the taxpayer who pays for it.”

California has some of the highest taxes in the country, Winegarden added. “This is just making it worse."

SEIU Local 1000's previous three-year labor contract was estimated to cost taxpayers an additional $1.5 billion when it was enacted in 2023, according to the California Legislative Analyst's Office. But a state budget crisis led to a delay in raises, and the union agreed to temporary pay cuts in June 2025.

The current contract expired June 30. The union said the Newsom administration waited until the last minute to reject the union’s proposals when negotiating contract renewal earlier this year, making members of the SEIU Local 1000 work without a contract for more than three months.

“CalHR remains ready to sit down anytime with the union to negotiate a fair and responsible agreement,” Angela Musallam, deputy director of communications for the California Department of Human Resources, told The Center Square via email on Friday. “The state remains focused on protecting the critical and essential services that Californians rely on.”

Newsom’s office did not comment for this story and instead referred The Center Square to the state Department of Human Resources.

The union represents employees of every state government department, according to the SEIU Local 1000 website, including workers in jobs that include nurses, information technology professionals, printers, educators, analysts and custodians, among many other jobs.

According to an information webpage about the strike, SEIU Local 1000 officials said any strike of this magnitude will be historic in California.

“California has never seen a strike this large involving the workers who keep the state running,” the union said on its website. “The Newsom administration can prevent this by coming to the table and bargaining in good faith. Administrations may change, but our demand will not: bargain fairly with the workers who keep California running.”

Under state law, employers can’t discipline or threaten employees who are members of a union and who participate in a strike, but employees who do participate won’t get paid while going on strike. They also can’t use vacation or sick time, according to the SEIU Local 1000.

The union has a strike fund to help offset financial losses to employees who go on strike, but the money isn’t meant to replace lost wages employees lose when striking. Rather, that money, which members pay in the form of union dues, is meant to pay for legal services to represent union members if they face retaliation from employers for going on strike.