Mayor Cherelle Parker reached a one-year deal with the city’s biggest union, averting a strike

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on Friday night reached a one-year contract extension with the city’s biggest union for municipal workers, ending a months-long standoff and averting a strike that could have halted city services like trash collection.

The 8,400 workers of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33 have been working without a contract since their last deal, negotiated under former Mayor Jim Kenney, expired on July 1.

The new contract, which includes 5% raises and $1,400 one-time bonuses, applies retroactively to that date and will expire at the end of June 2025. The deal will cost the city $80.2 million over five years and largely continues the terms of the Kenney-era contract for issues other than wages, such as retirement and health-care benefits.

“I am absolutely positively clear that [the administration’s] vision cannot be a reality if we don’t have the men and women who are part of the city of Philadelphia’s municipal workforce ... have the respect and dignity that they deserve,” Parker said at City Hall news conference.

The dispute between Parker and the union was an unusual one because it was primarily about the length of the union’s contract, rather than pay or benefits.

Mayors traditionally sign four-year contracts that begin in the summer of their first year. Parker, who took office in January, instead asked all four major municipal unions to sign one-year deals to allow her administration time to get on its feet. The unions for police officers, firefighters, and white-collar workers like supervisors all previously agreed to the short-term extensions.

But D.C. 33 held out, insisting on a multiyear deal that could give union members greater stability in the event that an economic downturn drags down the city budget. Union president Greg Boulware, who was elected in June after campaigning in part on securing a multiyear contract, recently asked his members to authorize union leadership to call a strike if talks stalled, and a week ago 85% voted to give him that power.

» READ MORE: Greg Boulware has been elected the new leader of AFSCME DC 33, Philly’s largest union for city workers

“It wasn’t going to be a nice Thanksgiving, but we’ve averted that to be able to keep moving forward,” Boulware said at the news conference.

While Boulware did not achieve his goal of reaching a longer contract, the 5% across-the-board raise is D.C. 33’s largest one-year increase in more than 30 years, Parker said, and it’s also bigger than the 4.4% pay bumps other union workers received this year. (The last contract, reached in 2021, included 9% raises over three years, additional increases for sanitation workers, and four weeks of paid parental leave.)

Parker, whose negotiating team was led by Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris, has committed to negotiating multiyear contracts with all four unions that would take effect next summer.

“It’s just a stepping stone into the direction that we would like to see our membership be in,” Boulware said. “We pledged that we want to fight for our members to change the quality of life for them.”

The deal announced Friday also includes the creation of a new job title — sanitation worker — and automatically promotes all laborers within the Department of Sanitation into that role, bumping them up into a higher pay range. A similar arrangement was created for asphalt-breakers in the Streets Department.

Parker has been an ally to organized labor throughout her career, and it would have been shocking if she had allowed the D.C. 33 dispute to reach the point of a strike. But Friday night’s announcement also marked the second time in Parker’s first year as mayor that she has stared down a municipal union and largely got what she wanted.

Earlier this year, AFSCME’s District Council 47, which represents professionals and mid-level managers and has more office workers than D.C. 33, sued Parker over her strict return-to-work policy, which requires all city employees to work in person five days a week after many had been working two or three days in the office since the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than compromise, Parker fought it out in court, and a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge ruled in favor of the administration in July.

With an average annual pay of around $45,000, D.C. 33 members are the city’s lowest-paid union employees, and their wages have been largely flat for decades when adjusted for inflation. Boulware has described D.C. 33 as the “the working poor,” and he has been seeking significant pay bumps, more generous pension plans, and the relaxation of a rule that requires all city employees except veteran police officers to live in Philadelphia.

He’s likely to face fierce resistance from Parker on the residency issue. As a City Council member, Parker supported measures to ensure the city’s jobs are preserved as economic opportunities for Philadelphia residents.

DC33 hasn’t gone on strike since 1986 when a 20-day work stoppage halted city services.

That strike interrupted trash pickup and by the end, some emergency disposal dump sites had filled with “stinking, maggot-laced garbage,” the Daily News reported. The work stoppage was the longest municipal worker strike in the city’s history, according to the Daily News.

Friday’s announcement came two hours after former Mayor Michael A. Nutter’s official portrait was unveiled in the Mayor’s Reception Room, where Parker and Boulware held their news conference.

As it happens, Nutter’s tenure marked the last prolonged episode of labor strife in City Hall. D.C. 33 and two other city unions clashed with Nutter throughout his tenure, at one point preventing him from delivering the annual budget address, Philly’s version of the presidential State of the Union speech, by packing Council chambers and shouting him down.

The deal Parker unveiled Friday averted, for now, the potential that her administration will be defined by labor discord.

“On tonight, we figured out how to get to yes,” Parker said.