District Council 33 On Day 7 Of Strike — Still No Deal
The battle between Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and AFSCME District 33 is still not over. DC 33, which is Philadelphias largest municipal workers’ union, met with the mayor over the weekend and did not end with any terms of a deal.
The district and the Parker administration negotiated for hours and did not come to any terms of agreement. So far, there has not been any comments on anything that was disgusted during the meeting. The district nor the Parker administration did not schedule the next meeting on when they will negiotate again.
With the strike, it has led the city to file court injunctions to bring some employees back to work. This resulted into two sanitation workers getting injured in a hit-and-run while working lawst week.
Here are some things that the union workers are fighting for:
DC 33 is pushing for better wages and improved health care benefits for all its members.
Mayor Cherelle Parker and city officials claim they’ve offered the union a 13% pay raise spread over four years—an offer Parker has described as historic.
However, DC 33 President Greg Boulware has challenged that figure. The city’s current proposal outlines a three-year contract with a 2.75% raise in the first year, followed by 3% increases in each of the next two years.
Boulware pointed out that the proposed total includes a separate 5% salary increase both sides agreed to in November 2024 as part of a one-year extension.
“This 13% narrative needs to stop,” Boulware said last week. “If the mayor wanted to stick with that number, she and her team should’ve agreed to the four-year deal we proposed last fall. They’re the ones who asked for the one-year extension—not us. You can’t count that now as part of the current negotiations. That’s not how this works.”
In the meantime, trash is still taking over the corner of residential neighborhoods in Philly. The piles have gotten so high, resdients are calling them the “Parker Piles” on social media.
The Parker administration issued 63 trash drop off locations for residents to put their trash. These locations are filling up fast, causing spilt trash flowing in the middle of the streets.
The stikes also had a effect on Wawa Welcome America over the weekend, where rapper LL Cool J and Philadelphia singer Jazmine Sullivan pulled out of their preformaces.
