Latest news with #CherelleParker
CBS News
11 hours ago
- Business
- CBS News
Philadelphia's DC 33 ratifies new contract after tentative agreement. What's next?
Philadelphia's AFSCME District Council 33 ratified its new contract with the city, approving the deal that ended an eight-day strike. The strike forced some city libraries and pools to close and halted trash pickup for more than a week, causing large piles of garbage to pile up at the city's temporary drop-off sites. The deal grants 9% in raises spread out over three years, averaging 3% per year. The deal also comes with a $1,500 bonus in the first year. The city says the deal will cost $115 million. Mayor Cherelle Parker has touted the 5% increase from the first year of her administration and said she'll have raised the DC 33 workers' pay 14% through her first term, a figure she notes is more than several of her predecessors. The union represents about 9,000 blue-collar workers in multiple city departments, including sanitation workers, police dispatchers, maintenance workers at Philadelphia International Airport, and more. For the three-year agreement to be ratified, at least 51% of DC 33's members needed to vote in favor of it. The deal offers considerably less than the 8% a year the union representatives came to the table seeking, a figure they later brought down to 5% a year. AFSCME District Council 33 President Greg Boulware said the reception of the deal was mixed among union members. "I don't know what's to celebrate," Boulware previously said. "The same people that were poor yesterday are still poor today." However, Boulware said that he believes there are still more wins than losses for DC 33 members in the plan. He pointed to union negotiators fending off what he said were demands from the city. In a three-page statement posted online, the union said it fought off attempts from the city to "seize control of medical claims payments" and add a surcharge for smokers. They also listed what they deemed "unacceptable" proposals to change sick policy and work rules.
CBS News
7 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
District Council 47 reach tentative agreement with Philadelphia to avert possible strike
AFSCME District Council 47, the union that represents 6,000 city workers, including the Philadelphia Parking Authority and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, has reached a tentative agreement with the city, averting a possible strike. DC 47 announced they had reached a deal around 5:30 a.m. Tuesday on their Facebook page. Mayor Cherelle Parker said the agreement will increase DC 47 members' pay by 13.5% over her four years in office. That includes a new three-year contract and the one-year contract extension agreed to last fall. News of the agreement came a day after the union held a strike authorization vote Monday. The union said more information will be shared soon on the agreement.
The Hill
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump attacks public employees, but unions are fighting back
Score one for the working man! Last week in Philadelphia, municipal workers got a new contract and higher pay after making good on their promise to strike. Mayor Cherelle Parker agreed to pay a little extra to hardworking people who wake up early to keep the city working, including those picking up the garbage. In solidarity with the workers, rapper LL Cool J had canceled a planned Independence Day performance. The successful strike stands out at a moment when government workers at the city, state and national levels are under attack from President Trump. He portrays them as a lazy group whose sleepy heartbeats are evidence that government is too big, too bureaucratic and wasting tax dollars. The Supreme Court gave the president's distorted view of government workers more power last week when the justices ruled the president is within his legal rights to execute mass job cuts without consulting Congress. The high court said Trump's unilateral plan to fire workers doesn't break the law. Only after he acts, the ruling said, can judges determine if Trump violated Congress's power under the Constitution to set spending for federal agencies. But Trump's ugly view of people-powering government was exposed last week. A flood in Texas drowned hundreds, including children at a summer camp, prompting questions about Trump's cuts to federal workers who could have given early warnings and possibly saved lives. The former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told CNN that there was a 'lack of a warning coordination meteorologist' in the Austin-San Antonio office, due to early retirement offers by the administration to cut staffing. At the start of Trump's second term, he went after top officials at the Justice Department in apparent revenge for their work indicting him for alleged crimes. Now with the Supreme Court ruling, he is free to pursue large scale firings of federal workers. And they have come 'with no explanation or warning, creating rampant speculation and fear within the workforce over who might be terminated next,' as the Washington Post reported. A federal worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told the paper she is mourning her agency's demise and concluded, 'We are toast.' The massive number of job cuts could be in the 'tens of thousands,' eliminating staff across the federal government, ranging from the 11 Cabinet departments to 19 federal government agencies. At the State Department alone, the New York Times reported, 'nearly 2,000 employees … have been targeted for dismissal.' This demonization of public employees suffused the Heritage Foundation's 'Project 2025,' an effort led by Russell Vought, who is now heading Trump's Office of Management and Budget. Vought infamously declared that he is going after federal workers intending to 'put them in trauma.' That destruction came to life with efforts led by Elon Musk, Trump's biggest campaign donor and the world's richest man. He created the Department of Government Efficiency to cut the federal workforce by reducing government spending by a trillion dollars. But at a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk conceded his effort was not close to reaching that goal, even as he pushed federal workers to take early retirement and buy-outs or risk being outright fired. Musk also failed to find wasteful activities. 'DOGE is not offering any solid claims that it has improved services in any way … rather, it has made the quality of some government services worse,' Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told The Guardian. Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it was abandoning a plan to fire 80,000 federal workers whose prime mission is to help veterans with their health care. Reports of experienced staff leaving the National Nuclear Security Administration, which handles the nation's nuclear weapons, set off alarms. When an outbreak of bird flu hit earlier this year, the Agriculture Department had to bring back workers it had pushed out. The Trump administration's constant trashing of federal workers amounts to an attack on unions at a time when government employees are highly unionized, but only 6 percent of private sector workers and 10 percent of all U.S. workers are in unions. President Joe Biden was the first president to join a picket line, and he said, 'The reason this country is working is because the middle class is growing. The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class.' Historically, unions have been seen by Republicans as a major source of money for Democrats. But blue-collar, non-college and non-government workers — private-sector union members — are increasingly identifying as Republicans. Some union leaders, such as Teamsters President Sean O'Brien, broke with Biden and the Democrats. He surprised many by speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention and did not support the Biden-Harris ticket in 2024, or more precisely, did not support Harris when Biden left the race. That trend will be tested this year as unions play a vital role in state legislative and gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. There are signs of union revival. In 2023, the Teamsters won a major contract victory after threatening to strike against UPS. With the union win in Philadelphia, the old Mark Twain joke fits labor union power today: 'The report of my death was an exaggeration.' Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.'
Fast Company
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
Why did 9,000 of Philadelphia's municipal workers go on strike?
On July 1, more than 9,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)'s District Council 33 in Philadelphia went on strike. The work stoppage entered its second week with no end in sight, but a marathon bargaining session resulted in a 4 a.m. tentative agreement between the union's leaders and the city on Wednesday, July 9. While Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has tried to spin it as a win for the workers (and has embraced it as a victory for her administration), some union members' public reaction to the deal has been far from positive. On Monday, July 14, they'll vote on whether to ratify the new contract, and the outcome is currently anyone's guess. The union—known better as DC33—represents the city's blue-collar municipal workers, who handle a wide range of job descriptions—from 911 dispatchers to library assistants to water department employees. Perhaps most notably, it also represents thousands of sanitation workers, and it's that group in particular that became the most visible symbol of the strike due to the nature of their work—and the visceral ramifications of their work stoppage. As the sixth-largest city in the U.S., Philadelphia generates a lot of trash. And with the trash collectors on strike, things quickly got ugly. Enormous piles of trash popped up all over the city once the workers walked out, spilling out of the city's designated temporary drop-off centers and onto the city's streets and sidewalks. In an unflattering homage to Mayor Parker, who became the face of the city's fitful negotiations with the union, some residents dubbed the garbage heaps 'Parker piles.' Thanks to soaring temperatures, spiking humidity, and heavy rain, residents complained that the stench was becoming a serious problem before the agreement was reached. So how did the city get here? DC33's most recent contract expired at midnight on July 1, following a one-year extension that the union agreed to at the beginning of Parker's term in 2024. While the mayor's office indicated a willingness to continue bargaining, the union's leadership decided to call a strike, determined to secure a meaningful economic boost for their members. This marks the first time DC33 has hit the bricks since 1986, when workers stayed out for three weeks, and 45,000 tons of garbage towered over the streets. The primary issue is money: Members of DC33 are the lowest paid of the city's four municipal unions, as well as the only one with a predominantly Black membership; the other three include AFSCME DC47, which is made up of white-collar city workers, and the unions representing the city's police officers and firefighters. The average salary among DC33 members is only $46,000 a year, which workers have decried as poverty wages. (Sanitation workers, by the way, generally take home about $42,000 a year, and Philadelphia's sanitation workers are among the lowest-paid employees in the country despite serving a city of more than 1.5 million residents.) Those numbers place them well below a living wage for Philadelphia, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated as $48,387 for a single adult with no children. The union was most recently asking for a 5% yearly wage increase over a three-year contract, but the city refused to budge from its own proposal of 2.75%, 3%, and 3% increases over that same period—only inching up to a 3% first-year raise in the tentative agreement. The city of Philadelphia currently has a budget surplus of $882 million, from which the mayor budgeted $550 million to cover all four city workers' union contracts. The cost of the proposed DC33 contract will be $115 million over its three years. In contrast, Parker's current budget proposal has already bookmarked $872 million for the Philadelphia Police Department, a $20 million increase that includes $1.3 million for new uniforms. City officials touted their lowball offer to DC33 as a sign of fiscal responsibility, but even now that bargaining has ended, union negotiators and their membership remain adamant that it's just not enough. There were other issues at play, too. Unlike other city employees like police and firefighters, DC33 members are required to live inside the city of Philadelphia—which, given the rising cost of living, only adds to the economic pressures they face. The union sought to remove the residency requirement in order to give their members more flexibility, but the city ultimately shot down their request. In addition, the union fought to preserve and improve members' healthcare and pension plans, and saw some success. With an embattled mayor facing criticism over her own staff's lavish salaries and mixed results on her campaign promise to make the city ' safer, cleaner, greener,' the city took an increasingly combative posture toward the union. Multiple injunctions forced certain strikers (like those at the airport, the medical examiners' office, the water department, and the 911 dispatch center) back to work, while the city paid private contractors to clear the trash drop-off sites and called in non-union workers to perform union labor. Meanwhile, DC33 maintained picket lines outside libraries, sanitation centers, and city buildings during a week of sweltering heat. Workers danced, sang, marched, set up impromptu cookouts, and waved signs at passersby. The Wawa Welcome America concert on the Fourth of July lost both of its headliners, LL Cool J and Jazmine Sullivan, who both canceled their performances in solidarity with the strikers. There was also tragedy: Two striking DC33 workers, one of whom is pregnant, were the victims of a hit-and-run last week when an intoxicated individual drove into their picket line; Tyree Ford, a sanitation worker and father of four, sustained serious injuries and is still in critical condition. Ultimately, the city's strong-arm approach led to the current tentative agreement, which falls far short of what the workers wanted and is not guaranteed to survive the membership vote. Union leadership has been open about its own disappointment, too. 'The strike is over, and nobody's happy,' Greg Boulware, president of DC33, told The Philadelphia Inquirer as he left the marathon bargaining session. 'We felt our clock was running out.'
New York Post
10-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Philadelphia workers and city reach deal to end strike that halted residential trash pickup
A union representing thousands of city workers in Philadelphia and the city have reached a deal to end a more than weeklong strike that halted residential curbside trash pickup and affected other services, officials said Wednesday. Nearly 10,000 blue-collar employees from District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees walked off the job July 1, seeking better pay and benefits after negotiations with the city failed. The tentative agreement gives workers a 3% raise in each of the next three years, far from the union's quest for 5% annual pay hikes. Advertisement 6 Piles of garbage pile up at a collection site in Philadelphia on July 9, 2025. AP Half of the members will get an additional 2% raise through an added level on the pay scale, Mayor Cherelle Parker said, and most members will qualify by the end of the contract. Residential trash collection will resume Monday, according to Parker, who asked for 'grace' as pools, libraries, recreation centers and other services get back to normal. Advertisement District Council 33 is the largest of four major unions representing city workers. Its membership includes 911 dispatchers, trash collectors, water department workers and many others. Police and firefighters weren't part of the strike. Parker said that over her four-year term, DC33 workers will have received a total pay bump of 14%, including a 5% one-year hike she gave all four unions after taking office last year. Many residents seemed to support boosting the pay of DC33 workers, even as trash piled up in neighborhoods. 6 A woman drops off trash at a garbage collection site on July 3, 2025. AP Advertisement 6 A man throws a bag of garbage into a bin as trash piles up on the streets of Philadelphia during the strike. AP The union says they earn an average $46,000 a year. Union members must still ratify the agreement. Rich Henkels, an actor who just moved into the city, called the settlement 'disappointing.' Advertisement 'The announced raises do nothing for the workers and their families, as the increases will be less than the rate of inflation,' said Henkels, 64. 6 Trash overflows into the streets of Philadelphia on July 8, 2025. AP 6 A front-end loader was brought in to clean up the collection sites overflowing with garbage in Philadelphia on July 7, 2025. AP 6 Garbage fills up a container as the Philadelphia skyline is seen in the background on July 3, 2025.. AP The settlement was announced early on the ninth day of the strike, a period that included the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Some of the 60 drop-off centers that the city had designated for residential trash were overflowing. Most libraries and some pools across the city were closed, and recreation centers operated on reduced hours. Advertisement Last week, judges had sided with the city in ordering some critical employees back to work at the city's 911 centers, water department and airport. 'We did the best we could with the circumstances we had in front of us,' union President Greg Boulware told reporters in brief remarks Wednesday morning.
