As a divided Philly workers’ union elects new leadership, a recent meeting became like an Eagles vs. Cowboys game

Just weeks after the ouster of a president who did not make it to the end of his first term, Philadelphia’s biggest municipal workers’ union will see a competitive election.

AFSCME District Council 33, the union for more than 9,000 city employees, held nominations for president Tuesday night. The election will take place by mail ballot over the next several weeks, with a winner announced May 14.

Whoever wins will quickly be tasked with leading the union through contract negotiations with the City of Philadelphia.

DC33′s contract expires at the end of June, and it will be the union’s first time negotiating with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. The administration has already expressed hope for a one-year contract extension with the municipal workers, rather than a longer-term contract, as it did with the unions that represent Philadelphia’s police and fire and sheriff’s departments.

The nominees for president are Omar Salaam, who has served as interim president for just over a month, and Greg Boulware, currently a business agent for the local that represents Philadelphia Water Department workers.

Salaam was part of the group whose complaint to AFSCME led to ex-president Ernest Garrett’s ouster. Boulware was nominated by Garrett.

Neither responded to The Inquirer’s requests for comment on their nominations.

Members who were present for nominations said they expect a close election. They said several hundred members showed up to the in-person meeting — less than 10% of membership — and those who were there seemed deeply divided over who should lead the union over the next several years.

One longtime DC33 member, who asked not to be named because of legal concerns, compared the atmosphere to that of an Eagles vs. Cowboys football game. “I have never in my life seen anything like what I saw” at Tuesday night’s meeting, the longtime member said.

Members said supporters of Boulware booed while Salaam spoke at the beginning of the meeting and broke into rowdy cheers over Boulware’s nomination.

It was “a chaotic scene,” said Pete Cutty, a member of DC33′s airport workers local. “I’m hoping for calmer waters on the other side” of the election.

The first few months of 2024 already brought a shake-up to the union’s leadership.

Garrett, who was elected president in 2020, was removed from the job by an AFSCME judicial panel in February. The panel found that Garrett “made numerous unilateral decisions to change staff salaries,” according to a copy of the AFSCME decision obtained by The Inquirer, and stated that some other hiring and business decisions he made gave the appearance of nepotism and impropriety.

The judicial panel barred Garrett from seeking AFSCME elected office for four years, preventing him from running in next month’s election. Garrett challenged that limitation in federal court, but his request was denied. He’s still appealing AFSCME’s ruling, but is unable to run for president again next month.

“If I’m not able to run, I’d like to see someone in there who genuinely cares about the membership” as president, Garrett said, and he believes Boulware fits that description. Boulware and Garrett both come from DC33′s Local 394, which represents Water Department workers.

The AFSCME charges weren’t the first indication of disagreement between Garrett and his interim successor, Salaam. The sanitation local Salaam comes from, Local 427, was one of two that broke away from DC33′s endorsement of Jeff Brown in Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary last year, instead backing now-Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

In the time from Garrett’s ouster to May’s election, Salaam told The Inquirer last month that his focus would be “just trying to stabilize” the union and to run it “by the book.”