San Francisco Mayor Orders City Workers To Report Back To The Office

After the left clutched pearls for an entire news cycle over DOGE ordering federal employees to report back to the office, San Francisco is taking a page out of their book.

On Friday, the Epoch Times reported that SF Mayor Daniel Lurie (D) has ordered city workers back into the office.

“Bringing our workers back to the office will make our services more effective and responsive to our residents,” spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak told the Times in an email. “That is what San Franciscans expect and what Mayor Lurie will deliver. 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 move reverses a July 21 decision by former mayor London Breed, who signed an amendment to the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance allowing employees to telecommute during the pandemic. Telecommuting had begun in the city on March 17, 2020, however, with the city’s shelter-in-place order.

As the Times notes further, not all city workers have been working from home since the pandemic, as the Port of San Francisco began welcoming all telecommuting employees back in November 2021, though the County of San Francisco Department of Human Resources (DHR) and SF Port at the time required all city workers to be vaccinated.

During his inaugural speech earlier this month, Lurie did not mention city workers but said he wanted to entice people to return to the downtown area.

“My job is not to demand that the private sector be back in the office every day. My job is to make you want to be downtown again for work—with your friends and with your family,” Lurie said.

“This is truly a new era of cooperation and mutual respect between City Hall, the Board of Supervisors, law enforcement, and the thousands of city employees working on the front lines—without you we cannot carry out this vision for change.”

Telecommuting in both the private and public sectors has been a problem for the economic activity of downtown San Francisco, the city has said. According to city data, nearly 470,000 people commuted into San Francisco every weekday prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, drumming up significant economic activity for the downtown area.

Work-from-home reduced economic activity, hurting small businesses in the economic core. As recently as Feb. 5, San Francisco lagged behind major cities such as Austin, Los Angeles, New York, and San Jose in office attendance. While 55 percent of New Yorkers work in the office, only 43 percent of workers in San Francisco commute to the office.

Lockdowns resulted in San Francisco office attendance dropping to less than 10 percent of what it had been prior. It began to slowly increase in the summer of 2021 and 2022. The reduction in the city’s in-person overall workforce led to significant economic losses for the city, according to research by WFH Research Group.

Telecommuting had been framed by the city as an opportunity to increase productivity, recruit and retain talent, save employees time due to not having to commute, and decrease the city’s carbon footprint.

A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco report, however, found little evidence of increased productivity due to telecommuting.