San Jose Office
675 N First St, Suite #150
San Jose CA 95112
Phone 510-577-9694
Fax 510-383-9613
August 11th, 2025
Sent Via Email
Mayor and City Council
City of San Jose
200 E Santa Clara St
San Jose, CA 95113
Re: Vote NO on the staff recommendation for Agenda Item 3.4 Dear Mayor Mahan and Members of the City Council,
On behalf of MEF—AFSCME Local 101, representing thousands of City of San José employees who deliver the public services our residents rely on, we urge you to vote NO on the staff recommendation for Agenda Item 3.4 and to remain neutral on Assembly Bill 339 (Ortega).
AB 339 is simple: it requires local governments to give unions at least 60 days’ notice before issuing an RFP to contract out work currently performed by existing job classifications. The bill includes broad emergency and exigent circumstance exemptions, ensuring that urgent needs can still be met without delay.
Under current law, the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act already requires notification and bargaining over contracting out bargaining unit work. But without a defined timeline, this “right” is often meaningless— by the time unions learn of a contract, the decision is made, bids are solicited, and any opportunity to propose alternatives has passed.
San José’s contracting practices are a case study in why AB 339 is needed. The City has repeatedly expanded private contracting—even during budget shortfalls—without transparent analysis or meaningful engagement with employee representatives. Our own information requests have documented:
• Millions spent annually on outside contracts for services overlapping with represented classifications, often without a cost-benefit analysis or service delivery. • Heavy reliance on expensive temporary, contract, and retiree rehire labor to backfill vacancies rather than hiring permanent staff, inflating costs while eroding service quality and accountability.
• Missed opportunities to insource work that could save money and stabilize the workforce.
City staff claim AB 339 will “delay” procurements and add workload. But the bill does not halt contracting, it simply requires early notice so that solutions can be explored before outsourcing becomes the default. If San José is already meeting its legal obligation to notify and bargain over contracting out, the City should be in full compliance on day one of AB 339.
The real problem isn’t the bill, it’s the City’s overreliance on outsourcing. In a budget environment where we are facing projected shortfalls, every dollar wasted on inflated outside contracts is a dollar not spent on stabilizing staffing, filling vacancies, and delivering services in-house.
AB 339 promotes good governance:
• Protecting taxpayer dollars by creating space to evaluate whether outsourcing truly saves money or simply shifts costs.
• Maintaining service quality and accountability through a stable, trained public workforce. • Encouraging collaboration between management and labor to identify cost-effective alternatives to contracting out.
We ask you to reject the City’s unnecessary opposition to AB 339. Vote NO on Item 3.4, and stand for fiscal responsibility, service quality, and transparency by remaining neutral on this commonsense bill.
Yours,
John Tucker
Business Agent
AFSCME Council 57 / AFSCME Local 101 (AFL-CIO)
675 North First St. Suite #150
San Jose, CA 95112
CC:
MEF-AFSCME Local 101 Members
Jean Cohen, South Bay Labor Council
City Unions