Small business owners in San Francisco may soon be able to do something no commercial tenants in a major U.S. city have done before: form unions and collectively bargain with their landlords over rent and lease terms.
Supervisor Connie Chan’s new legislation would let small business tenants organize and negotiate collectively, according to Broke-Ass Stuart. KQED also reported on the proposal, which would require commercial landlords to recognize and negotiate with tenant unions.
Not your typical union fight
This isn’t about workers versus bosses. The proposal flips the union model sideways, letting shop owners band together against the landlords who control their overhead. San Francisco has no commercial rent control, meaning landlords can raise rents as high as the market will bear. For a coffee shop or hair salon clearing thin margins, a sudden lease hike can be a death sentence.
The idea has a direct ancestor. In 2022, Chan co-sponsored San Francisco’s first-in-the-nation “Union-At-Home” ordinance, which allows tenants of multi-unit buildings (five or more rental units) to form associations that collectively bargain with landlords over repairs, rent increases, and building conditions. That residential law, modeled after the National Labor Relations Act, guarantees tenants of buildings with 5 or more rental units the right to organize into unions upon showings of 50% support, and landlords must meet at least quarterly with tenant unions to confer in good faith.
Chan’s new proposal would extend that same organizing framework to commercial storefronts. If it follows the residential template, small business tenants in a shared building or corridor could vote to form a union, and landlords would be legally required to come to the table.
What small businesses should know right now
The legislation has been introduced but has not been voted on or enacted. No formal ordinance text appears in the city’s public legislative database yet. Business owners interested in the outcome should monitor San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee agendas for hearings and public comment opportunities.
If something like this passes, it could reshape the power dynamic between small tenants and commercial property owners in a city where rents are skyrocketing, largely driven by the artificial intelligence industry boom, and evictions are at the highest levels in nearly a decade.
Landlord groups will almost certainly push back, and legal questions remain about how collective bargaining over commercial leases would interact with existing state contract and property law. Business owners who lease space should consider connecting with neighboring tenants informally and talking to an attorney about how union-style organizing could affect their current lease obligations.
The Board of Supervisors has not yet scheduled a committee hearing or vote. Watch for movement when the board returns to session.
