Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
8-12-25
A quick comment on the Afscme strike in Philadalphia.
The strike by 9000 members of Afscme District Council 33 in Philadelphia ended last Wednesday after union leaders accepted the city’s last offer. The union represents numerous public sector workers including 911 dispatchers, sanitation workers and medical examiners. But it is the sanitation workers, garbage collectors and their crucial role that brought the full weight of the courts down on the strikers.
On the first day of the strike the city with a Democratic mayor had a judge order 911 dispatchers back to work to, “avoid delays in emergency response times and public health”, that back to work order also applied to water department workers. Another city injunction, “…prohibited DC33 picketers from blocking or obstructing access to municipal buildings”. Another court order prevented striking sanitation workers from “gathering in groups of more than eight, or standing within 10 feet of city property (which includes sanitation centers), or engaging in behavior deemed as intimidating or harassing.” This like the 1880’s folks.
Old Biden set a great precedent here with the rail workers didn’t he folks. The bosses use all the institutions at their disposal to crush strikes and the workers movement. We need to take note of that.
What use is a strike that doesn’t stop production or the daily activity of business? But we’re used to these types of work stoppages organized by the moribund, class collaborators that are in control of our unions. Strikes today are simply 24-hour protests which get a little old after you’ve been out there for any length of time watching people cross your picket lines. The union hierarchy is very generous with coffee and donuts. Then when we are being effective and actually accomplish what strikes are supposed to accomplish, halt production, out come the injunctions followed by the batons.
One has to shake one’s head, or in modern lingo SMH, when representatives of the bosses’ institutions, their political parties or their media get their judicial system to intervene to smash a strike out of concern for the health and safety of the population as a whole; our access to medical care or water for example. In the US hundreds of thousands of people, workers and the poor, die through the lack of any decent health care system; the US has the worst health care system and the most expensive of all the industrialized countries. Do a little research and see how many “Americans’ in the Navajo nation have no water or electricity, never mind jobs.
I don’t know how many times I lied to my supervisor (and some of them knew I was lying and were OK with it) when I was sent to shut off water to a single mother with children who couldn’t pay the bill. The powers that be learned that promoting people in to management positions that came out of the trenches was not a good strategy.
The members of DC 33 went back to work immediately but still, as of this writing, have to vote on the contract which will take place next week. Many workers are unhappy with the tentative agreement that includes a 3% wage increase a year for three years. The union had demanded 8% a year over three years then, in the face of management’s intransigence retreated to 5% a year. According to the Philadelphia Enquirer, Members of DC 33 earn an average annual salary of $46,000, $2000 below the city’s “living wage”
The strike had considerable support among the public despite the inconvenience.
“Sanitation workers are providing ‘public infrastructure necessities’ and should get more than the “bare minimum,”, South Philly resident Ronald Jones told BillyPenn, a local Philadelphia news outlet. Others agreed:
“I think a temporary in convenience for most of us worth it for those who deserve to be paid because they're not being paid enough to do a job that's a dirty job that nobody wants to do.” Says one of the residents in the video above.
“I know what it is to work and then your money can’t [be sufficient for] you to live,” another woman says, “So if they have to do what they have to do, then they have to do what they have to do. Like they have to come up with a solution. The city has the money, give them the money.”
The president of District Council 33, Greg Boulware is also unhappy with the contract and that the management threatened to take more after he made a concession on wages. He blamed the management for using the courts to break the strike as “bad faith”. One would think he might launch a ferocious attack on them but the further up the union hierarchy management ladder you go, the more they push the negotiations process as a gentleman’s exercise in problem solving and after all, we are on the same team as the boss. There is no such thing as good faith when it comes to this class conflict over the wages and working conditions of working people.
One might wonder why on earth the union leadership would end a strike and the workers return to work when the members have not yet seen the tentative agreement the leadership has accepted and had the chance to vote on it.
Here’s why that is the scenario. Even though the DC33 president suggests that if the members vote the tentative agreement down they might go back out on strike, it is highly unlikely and the president knows it. It’s hard to get that momentum back and union officials use this tactic all the time in order to get workers back on the job. Even so, on what basis will they go back out? What is in it for them? The leadership completely folded in the face of the bosses’ aggression so there’s likely little confidence that if they sacrifice more time, money and material well being they’ll get anything better. I won’t say it can’t happen but it’s unlikely.
Why would the DC33 president be surprised that the boss went to the courts to render the work stoppage ineffective as a response to a very reasonable wage demand from the union? Does he not know what Biden did to the rail workers?
The leadership of DC 33 simply capitulated. They have no answer to this aggression and the boss knows it; they likely gave money to the mayor who is a Democrat. The employers throughout the nation do not fear the trade union leadership. They have learned over the past decades since the 1980’s when there was an attempt by some sectors of organized labor to counter the capitalist offensive under Carter and then Reagan, that our leaders will not fight to win.
There are some 666,000 union members in Pennsylvania according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I have been a retired Afscme member for 20 years but I think DC33 was the second largest District Council in the country. But what is the point of all this structure, if the potential power of this organized sector of workers is not mobilized against the employers? The Afscme, and the entire leadership of organized labor refuse to mobilize this power except when it’s time to get their friends in the Democratic Party in to office.
Individual locals even major unions cannot beat the employers in isolation. They argue that the laws are against us, that if they do this or do that the courts will respond and take our treasuries or threaten jail time. Well unions were illegal and we had to violate anti-union laws to get them. Trump doesn’t care about the damn law. The railroad workers had every right to strike back in 2024 so Biden went to the legislature with Pelosi and got the US Congress to pass the paw to make their legal strike illegal overnight. No problem “reaching across the aisle” that day.
There was considerable tension between some of the strikers and the cops after the injunction to ban more than 8 people gathering within 10 feet of a site. After the injunction the police told picketers not to stop that resulted in some back and forth. From WHYY.org
“Then, a law enforcement officer with a sheriff’s badge handed out the court order and read it out loud to an increasingly rowdy crowd, who started shouting back, questioning their authority and sometimes swearing loudly.
“I understand your position, but we can’t let nobody in or out,” said one man who appeared to be a union striker but refused to identify himself.
As a crowd grew, then shrank before retreating across the street, phones were pulled out to record the situation.
“The cops get overtime,” somebody in the crowd shouted.
“We got families, we got kids. What the f—-?” said another person. “We’re not moving. Come on, let’s get serious.”
It’s the same old story and one of the reasons, despite the positive views on unions, that so many members are angry at the refusal of their leaders to go on the offensive. Workers end up on picket lines for weeks with very little to show for it. The major cause for this capitulation in the face of the employer’s war against workers is their view that workers and bosses have the same interests, are on the same team. This is embodied in the Team Concept through management labor partnerships, interest based bargaining, quality circles and various other labor management join cooperation.
It’s no wonder worker are cautious about going out on strike. More often than not the worker is prepared to fight but the union hierarchy is not. We are faced with a war on two fronts. One is against the employers, but the other, a much harder one, is against the concessionary policies of our own leadership.
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