Anthropic sent staff home over a strike SEIU denies calling

Anthropic told employees at its San Francisco office to stay home Monday and Tuesday, citing warnings from staffing contractor Allied Universal that a security guard strike was possible. The union representing those guards says that warning didn't match reality.

SEIU, which represents Allied Universal's workers across California, told Quartz no strike authorization vote had been held and no strike threats were made for those two days. The union is in extended contract negotiations with Allied Universal and other California security firms over pay, healthcare and training, and those talks are still open.

Anthropic declined to comment on the discrepancy. Allied Universal didn't respond either, so it's unclear whether the contractor overstated a risk, misread its own labor talks, or passed along a warning SEIU says it never gave.

Two empty office days cost Anthropic little. Harder to shrug off is that a major AI lab closed a building on a security contractor's word without checking it against the union that warning was supposedly about. Allied Universal's California contracts are still being negotiated, and a repeat of this kind of mismatch would make the pattern the story, not the two lost workdays.