A strike warning emptied Anthropic's San Francisco offices

Anthropic told staff at its San Francisco offices to work from home on Monday and Tuesday after its security staffing firm warned that a strike by office guards was possible. Business Insider reported the two-day instruction, which followed a notice sent last week by Allied Universal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

At a glance

• The warning reached Anthropic through Allied Universal, the contractor that staffs its office security, rather than through the union, and the company acted on it by keeping employees out of the buildings.
• SEIU, which represents thousands of security workers across California, has been in contract talks with Allied Universal and other firms since April, pushing for higher wages, better healthcare and broader job training.
• The union told Business Insider it had called no strike authorization vote and issued no strike threat for this week, which puts the notice Anthropic acted on at odds with the union's own account.

The episode reads as a precaution rather than a labor conflict at Anthropic itself: the guards in question work for a contractor, and the company appears to have acted on that contractor's warning without matching it against the union's position. The timing also carries weight, since a company weeks away from a public IPO filing has little reason to risk a disruption at its main offices that it does not control.

SEIU, which represents the guards employed by Allied Universal, told Business Insider that it is in protracted contract negotiations with Allied and other California security firms, and that it had not called a strike authorization vote or issued any strike threat for this week. The union covers thousands of security workers in the state.

Those talks have run since April. The union is seeking higher wages, better healthcare and more comprehensive job training across the California contracts, which cover guards placed in corporate offices by staffing firms rather than hired directly by the companies whose buildings they watch.

Anthropic's hybrid policy generally requires staff to be in the office at least 25% of the time, according to job postings, so the instruction suspended the in-person requirement for two working days. It applied to the San Francisco offices, where the security contract in question is in force.

Security spending has risen across the tech industry over the past few years. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic and OpenAI have dealt with several threats against their employees. Because the guards at the San Francisco offices are employed by a contractor, the dispute sits between Allied Universal and the union rather than between Anthropic and its own workforce.

When the S-1 becomes public Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 draft in June and is expected to file for its initial public offering as soon as August, with secondary-market investors valuing the company at $1.5 trillion. The reporting does not say whether the instruction to stay home extends past Tuesday, and no return date for the San Francisco offices has been given.