Philly's city worker strike ends after Mayor Cherelle Parker strikes deal with union

PHILADELPHIA — Sorry, rats. The "Parker piles" of trash found around the city are about to disappear.

Philadelphia's first major city worker strike since 1986 lasted eight days and four hours before Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Greg Boulware, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33, reached a deal for a new contract at about 4 a.m. Wednesday.

That means the union's roughly 9,000 members — blue collar city employees such as trash collectors, street pavers, 911 dispatchers, and other front line workers — will return to work immediately.

"I have good news tonight for the hardworking men and women of AFSCME District Council 33, and for every taxpaying business and resident in Philadelphia," Parker said in a statement.

It was also good news for Parker.

The deal is for a three-year contract with 3% raises each year — close to Parker's demands throughout negotiations and far below the 5% annual increases Boulware went on strike for. The contract also includes one-time $1,500 bonuses for DC 33 members and the creation of a fifth step in the union pay scale, which will likely boost wages by approximately 2% for veteran members.

"The strike is over, and nobody's happy," a dejected Boulware said in an interview as he exited negotiations. "We felt our clock was running out."

The contract, which applies retroactively to July 1, needs to be ratified by DC 33 members to take full effect. The ratification vote is usually a formality, but it's unclear how members will react to the deal after being asked to walk off the job. They will not be repaid for the time they were on strike, an attorney for the union said.

Parker said her previous offer for a similar deal would cost the city $115 million over three years. The final version will likely come in slightly above that total.

The accord ends the most tumultuous chapter in Parker's 17-month tenure. The mayor has made an ambitious plan to "clean and green" the city one of her top priorities, and the strike strained her administration's relationship with the city workers responsible for carrying out that vision. Her combative approach to the standoff also put her at odds with many of her allies in organized labor.

Parker has maintained throughout the strike that she is seeking a "fair and fiscally responsible" contract and was willing to bear the political consequences.

The primary sticking point in negotiations was over the size of raises Boulware was hoping to win for the members of DC 33, the city's largest and lowest-paid bargaining unit and the only major municipal union in which a majority of members are Black.

But the union also initially sought an increase in the city's contribution to DC 33's fund for healthcare benefits from $1,500 per employee per month to $1,700. The administration, meanwhile, sought a major reform that would have seen the city pay for the cost of claims, rather send a flat fee into the fund. The final deal did not see a wholesale reshaping of the fund, as Parker's team had wanted, and it left the city's contribution unchanged, Boulware said.

The union also asked for a softening of the residency rule requiring most city employees to live in Philadelphia that would have allowed DC 33 members to move out after 10 years of service. The final deal did not include a change the residency requirement, Boulware said.

Intermittent talks took place over the last week at the Community College of Philadelphia's Career and Advanced Technology Center in West Philadelphia. The breakthrough came in the third formal negotiating session since Boulware declined Parker's final offer on the night of June 30 and declared a work stoppage at 12:01 a.m. July 1 — the very minute the union's last contract expired and the first moment he was legally allowed to call a strike.

At the time, Boulware was insisting on a contract with 5% annual raises, while Parker was staying pat on an offer that included raises of 2.75%, 3,%, and 3%, plus the addition of the fifth pay scale step. The two sides remained locked in roughly the same positions on wages until Wednesday's talks.

Previous negotiation sessions offered little hope that the two sides were willing to compromise. The atmosphere was different when talks started Tuesday, and not only because of the torrential downpour and lightning in the early evening. By dinnertime, when union leaders ate takeout in a conference room and shared stories from the picket line, multiple proposals had already been exchanged.

Asked for comment around 8 p.m., Boulware declined, saying, "Let me get this done."

Parker's negotiating team, led by Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris, huddled in an office on the second floor, while more than two dozen union leaders congregated on the third. Lawyers and a state-appointed mediator shuttled back and forth.

Wednesday morning's agreement marked a significant turnaround from Thursday, the peak in tensions between the union and the administration. Parker that day gave a combative news conference atop the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps at the same time DC 33 members and supporters protested her on the other side of Eakins Oval.

"You can threaten me with not supporting me if I decide to run for reelection. You can call me a one-term mayor," Parker said. "But I'll tell you what I will not do. I will not put the fiscal stability of the city of Philadelphia in jeopardy for no one. If that means I'm a one-term mayor, then so be it."

During the strike, she and Boulware traded public barbs about their salaries — both several times larger than the average DC 33 member's $46,000 per year — and the mayor sought to drive a wedge between Boulware and the city employees in his union, at one point implying he was misleading them about her offer.

The war of words between Parker and Boulware was only one notable episode in a dramatic week for the city.

A DC 33 member was arrested for allegedly slashing the tires of a Philadelphia Gas Works truck on the first morning of the strike, and city officials said there were numerous acts of vandalism or attempts to undermine city services. Two picketing union members were injured after being struck by an alleged drunken driver Thursday night. Headliners LL Cool J and Philadelphia native Jazmine Sullivan pulled out of the city's Wawa Welcome America concert on July Fourth to support the strike. And Lee Saunders, AFSCME's national president cheered on picketers at a Monday event in Port Richmond.

The mayor dropped her public antagonism of the union on Friday, which appears to have been a turning point. The union that day sent the city a new proposal that Boulware said included movement on wages for the first time. Parker was scheduled to speak at the concert that night, but did not take the stage. On Monday, her administration held a news conference on the strike without her. And on Tuesday, there was no city news conference.

The two sides returned to West Philly on Tuesday afternoon and hashed out the compromise over more than 12 hours of talks.

To finalize the deal, Boulware had to convince his own executive board, made up of the heads of the various locals within DC 33, to approve it. He was the last person to enter the room before presenting the final compromise.

While walking in at 1:15 a.m., he said, "We'll see how this thing goes."

It appears to have initially been a tough sell for some DC 33 leaders. Members of the executive board could be heard raising their voices at each other before the final vote. One took a phone call in the hallway and expressed frustration with what the union got in the contract after eight days out on strike.

"These people are going to be pissed because they're going to feel like they took us out for nothing," the person said. "I'm telling you that s — is going to come back to bite us."

Lawyers continued to run back and forth making final tweaks. Finally, at around 4 a.m., Harris and Boulware signed the agreement.

During the strike, some public pools were closed, rec center hours were limited, and the city took extraordinary measures to keep other services functioning. Philadelphia Water Department supervisors were paid round the clock to work long shifts and sleep on cots in treatment facilities. And City Solicitor Renee Garcia won a series of court orders requiring a limited number of striking employees to return to work in areas critical to public health or safety: 911, water, the airport, and the medical examiner's office.

Several of the administration's strategies are likely to leave lasting strains in Parker's relationships with organized labor groups. The administration hired private companies to haul away dumpsters full of trash and clear piles that had built up on sidewalks. It also leaned on hundreds of nonunion city employees and trainees to handle sanitation work.

By almost all accounts, public support for the striking union members remained strong throughout the work stoppage.

The other three major municipal unions are working on the terms of their own expired contracts, but those talks are not expected to produce significant drama.

AFSCME District Council 47, which represents about 3,000 white collar workers like supervisors and professionals, has signed a brief extension to allow negotiations to continue. The union is holding a strike authorization vote that will end July 15, but it's unclear DC 47 leadership is eager to walk out.

And the unions for police officers and firefighters will participate in binding interest arbitration, the process that determines contracts for public safety unions that are barred from striking by state law, over the coming months.

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