PHILADELPHIA — The strike by some 9,000 city workers here remains solid in the face of the city government’s intervention to try to restrict picketing. Members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33 are fighting for higher wages and a better contract, and winning much-needed support.
AS WE GO TO PRESS:
Tentative contract signed, workers to debate, vote on settlement
“It’s important we’re standing up and this will make our union even stronger,” picket captain Terrell Reddick told the Militant on one of the dozens of picket lines set up across the city. Reddick works in the survey department at the Philadelphia Water Department plant in Germantown.
“I have co-workers who have to work two jobs to get by, same for the sanitation workers,” Reddick said. “Some work at ShopRite, others drive for Uber.” City officials “want to portray us as being rich, but we’re not.”
“We got people that work and repair the water mains and can’t afford their water bill,” DC 33 President Greg Boulware told a June 30 union rally at City Hall. “We got people that repair the runways at the airport and can’t afford a plane ticket.”
The union represents sanitation workers, 911 emergency call center dispatchers, library janitors and crossing guards, as well as water treatment and street maintenance workers, and others.
Shortly after the strike began July 1, the city got anti-union court injunctions, including one limiting picket lines to eight workers at each location. Officials want “to make sure that they diminish any opportunity for us to have an effective strike,” Boulware told the media.
In response to the court injunction, Reddick said the union has extended the number of different gates where workers picket. Picketing is organized 24/7. One injunction forced some Philadelphia Water Department workers back to work, labeling them as “essential.”
“If we’re so ‘essential,’ why can’t the city meet our demands,” water worker Shana George said. “We’re not asking for much, just a living wage.”
A central demand of the union is an increase in wages of 5% each year over three years, after initially demanding 8%. Instead, the city proposes 2.75% the first year and 3% in each of the last two years.
The union is also seeking hazard pay. “The garbage truck jobs can be dangerous,” George added. “As is fixing the water pipes in the streets with only a crew of two — one opening the manhole and the other looking out for traffic.”
On health insurance, the city would “like to cheapen what the plans offer,” George said, by cutting the range of health care provided. City bosses are also demanding changes to sick leave rules to allow them to regulate time taken for doctors’ visits and other appointments. The union is covering strikers’ health care during the walkout.
Strikers win solidarity
“AFSCME DC 47 members have come by our picket line to offer support and some stayed hours to talk,” Reddick said. Some DC 47 members in Local 2187 will vote July 10-14 on whether to authorize strike action.
Strikers and supporters demonstrated along the side of the city’s Independence Day annual parade and July 4th concert on Independence Mall chanting, “Philly is a union town. If we don’t get it, shut it down!”
At the parade, Democratic Party Mayor Cherelle Parker taunted strikers, saying they’d be earning double time if they quit the strike and worked that day. She claimed she wasn’t going to budge in talks.
“If you can’t afford to live, what does that say about society?” Maggie Sell, who came to the parade from Audubon, New Jersey, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. She said she was going to call the mayor to tell her to “give them the money.”
DC 33 has asked city bosses to eliminate the residency requirement that non-uniformed workers live in city limits.
“I think we should be able to live where we want,” George said. Parker insists the restriction remains and presses workers to use her signature mortgage assistance program instead of moving to areas where housing costs less.
Solidarity from workers and unions is needed.
The union is encouraging supporters to drop off water and food at the picket lines at City Hall and other sites listed on the union’s website.
To contribute to the union’s strike fund, send checks made out to AFSCME District Council 33 to Vanessa Flemings, AFSCME DC33 Building, 3001 Walnut St., 9th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Please put “Strike Fund” in the memo line. Or contribute online at https://afscme33.betterworld.org/campaigns/33-strike.
Ved Dookhun contributed to this article.