About 30 city workers in Solvang, the Santa Barbara County town known as the Danish Capital of America, have been on strike since Sept. 15, marking the first employee strike in the city's history. Three weeks later, the picket lines are still up, Danish Days festival signage still hasn't come down, and neither side has budged enough to end it.
The workers, represented by Teamsters Local 986, make up roughly 75% of Solvang's municipal workforce, according to the New York Post. The strike has repeatedly stalled as city leaders and union representatives traded wage proposals without landing on a deal, according to Santa Barbara News-Press. By Sept. 29, the walkout had entered its third continuous week, as reported by Santa Maria Sun.
Dueling Wage Proposals Keep Talks Stuck
The union has pushed for a three-year contract with annual 6% cost-of-living raises, per the same News-Press report. The city, for its part, offered 6% followed by 5% and then 4% — an offer the union turned down. Separate News-Press reporting also describes an earlier city offer of 6% followed by two consecutive 4% raises, while other accounts describe the union's earlier ask as a 4% increase in year one followed by 6% increases in each of the next two years, and still others describe the city's imposed final proposal as three straight years of 4% raises. The competing descriptions of the exact sequence have not been reconciled in available reporting, but one account from Santa Barbara News-Press' Santa Ynez Notebook put the two sides at roughly 2 percentage points apart overall.
Solvang City Manager Randy Murphy has framed the fight as rooted in a compensation study the city commissioned from RGS Advisors. “This about what the study said,” Murphy told the outlet. The City Council adopted salary changes based on that analysis in June 2025, and the city has said the study found senior-management positions needed raises to match market rates while most rank-and-file jobs did not. City officials have also pointed to a separate 2024 compensation study, cited by Noozhawk, that similarly found most represented employees within regional market pay ranges while management positions lagged behind.
Workers Point to Raises for City Hall Leaders
Union members see it differently. Workers say senior City Hall leaders have received raises of 20% to 40% over the past two budget cycles while their own pay stagnated, the News-Press reports — though other outlets have cited different ranges for those management increases, including figures as high as 25% to 40% described by syvnews.com. Jeff Lee, a Teamsters Local 986 representative, said the city has failed to put forward terms the bargaining unit would actually accept, and that the city council needs to authorize negotiators to keep bargaining.
The city maintains its hands are tied in a different way. Olivia Uribe-Mutal, assistant to the city administrator, said the city has offered as much as it can and remains willing to negotiate new contracts, adding that officials want striking workers back on the job. Murphy, separately, has said negotiations remain open while the city waits for the union to return to the table.
Mayor Calls Standoff Disappointing
Solvang Mayor David Brown addressed the standoff at a press conference on Oct. 2 at the Solvang Visitors Center on Copenhagen Drive, calling the situation disappointing, according to the News-Press account of the appearance. The city has said the total compensation picture — not just base wages but medical insurance and other benefits — factored into its negotiating position, and officials have described their offer as the largest percentage raise the city council has authorized in nearly 30 years of talks with the Teamsters. No other public agency in Santa Barbara County has offered cost-of-living increases of similar size, the city has said.
On the ground, the city says it has leaned on backup staffing and outside contractors to keep basic functions running, per Noozhawk. City Hall remains open, and water and wastewater service, emergency response, building inspections, code enforcement and parks and recreation operations have all continued, according to Santa Maria Times. Still, some maintenance has visibly lagged — workers told KEYT that Danish Days signage hadn't been taken down and gutters hadn't been cleared ahead of fall weather.
Costs Mount as Both Sides Wait
The city says it's tracking the expense of outside labor attorneys and contractors brought in during the strike, with Uribe-Mutal saying those costs will be made public once the dispute is resolved. “When the dust settles on this, it will be reported out,” the city said, per the News-Press report. Until then, the fight over Solvang's pay structure — and whether city hall's own raises set an unfair bar — shows no clear sign of ending.
