Following several years of relaxed telecommuting policies, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s directive seeks to enhance the city’s effectiveness and responsiveness to its residents.
San Francisco’s Mayor Daniel Lurie has mandated that city employees return to the office.
“Reintegrating our workforce back into the office will improve our services, making them more effective and responsive to our community,” stated Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, spokesperson for Mayor Lurie, in an email to The Epoch Times. “This is what San Franciscans anticipate, and Mayor Lurie is committed to delivering. We are eager to collaborate with our departmental partners and labor representatives in the coming weeks to execute the mayor’s plan.”
Since July 2021, many city employees have benefitted from the option of telecommuting, when former Mayor London Breed
signed an amendment to the Health Care Security Ordinance, adjusting the city’s telecommuting regulations to help lessen the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic. However, substantial teleworking began on March 17, 2020, coinciding with the
shelter-in-place order.
Not all city employees have been working from home since the pandemic’s onset. For instance, the Port of San Francisco started
welcoming all telecommuting staff back in November 2021, although at that time, the County of San Francisco Department of Human Resources (DHR) and SF Port mandated that all city employees be vaccinated.
In his inaugural address earlier this month, Lurie did not reference city employees but expressed his desire to encourage people to return to the downtown area.
“My role is not to insist that the private sector return to the office daily. My job is to make you want to be downtown again for work—surrounded by friends and family,” Lurie
remarked.
“This marks a genuinely new era of collaboration and mutual respect among City Hall, the Board of Supervisors, law enforcement, and the thousands of city employees on the front lines—without you, we cannot realize this vision of change.”
Telecommuting has posed challenges for the economic vitality of downtown San Francisco, as asserted by city officials. According to
city data, almost 470,000 individuals commuted into San Francisco on weekdays prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, generating significant economic activity in the downtown sector.
The shift to remote work has diminished economic activity and adversely impacted small businesses in the city’s economic hub. As of February 5, San Francisco
trails behind major cities such as Austin, Los Angeles, New York, and San Jose in terms of office attendance. While 55 percent of New Yorkers are back in the office, only 43 percent of San Francisco’s workforce commutes to the office.
The lockdowns led to office attendance in San Francisco plummeting to less than 10 percent of previous levels. Although there was a gradual increase during the summer of 2021 and 2022, the decline in the city’s in-person workforce heavily contributed to economic downturns, as highlighted by
research from the WFH Research Group.
Telecommuting had been
promoted by the city as a way to enhance productivity, attract and retain talent, save employees commuting time, and reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
However, a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found
minimal evidence supporting claims of increased productivity attributable to telecommuting.
