Lurie signs firefighter labor deal, boosts San Francisco public safety

Daniel Lurie signed a new labor deal with San Francisco firefighters that will run from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030, placing the city’s frontline emergency force at the center of his public-safety agenda while also locking in four more years of labor costs for residents to absorb.

The legislation covers International Association of Fire Fighters Local 798 Units 1 and 2 and was cosponsored by Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman and Supervisors Stephen Sherrill, Alan Wong and Bilal Mahmood. City leaders cast the agreement as part of a broader effort to keep firefighters safe, strengthen emergency response and improve public safety across San Francisco.

The practical stakes are easier to measure on the city’s streets than in City Hall speeches. A stable contract can help the San Francisco Fire Department recruit and keep experienced firefighters, reduce turnover and ease the pressure that often shows up in overtime and staffing gaps. Lurie’s office has also said San Francisco’s 911 emergency response system is now consistently meeting state standards, a benchmark that makes dispatch reliability and station readiness a more immediate test of the administration’s claims.

The contract lands alongside a series of other fire-service investments that City Hall is using to argue it is rebuilding the city’s emergency backbone. On May 6, the city said it had finished high-speed fiber internet upgrades at all 51 San Francisco fire stations, a systemwide modernization meant to improve communications. Lurie has also said San Francisco became the largest department in the United States to transition its entire fleet to non-PFAS turnout gear, and the mayor’s office set aside $500,000 for a firefighter cancer prevention screening pilot.

The administration is also betting on physical infrastructure. In Bayview-Hunters Point, the city broke ground on a new 50,000-square-foot fire department training campus at 1200 Carroll Avenue, on an eight-acre site funded through the 2020 Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond, a $628.5 million measure. City officials say the campus will consolidate training facilities and serve as a backup emergency operations center during a far-reaching incident, a reminder that San Francisco’s fire service now has to plan for earthquakes, wildfires and major outages at the same time.

The previous Unit 1 and Unit 2 agreements ran from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2026, so the new deal extends labor terms through the end of the decade. That gives the fire department more predictability, but it also fixes another large public-safety expense in place as the city continues to juggle staffing, infrastructure and a tight budget. IAFF Local 798 President Sam Gebler said the agreement will improve recruitment and retention of highly skilled professionals and is fair to first responders and taxpayers.