Curbside trash pickup resumes in Philly as District Council 33 members vote on new contract
Voting underway for DC 33 on tentative agreement as trash pickups resume
District Council 33 has started to vote on the tentative agreement reached with the City of Philadelphia as trash pickups resumed.
PHILADELPHIA - Normal trash pickup resumed in Philadelphia on Monday after District Council 33 reached a tentative agreement on a new contract last week.
The end of the strike means thousands of District Council 33 members, including sanitation workers, headed back to work on Monday.
Philadelphia's largest blue-collar union will vote this week to ratify the new contract, which includes a 14% wage increase over Mayor Cherelle Parker's four-year term.
What we know:
Curbside trash pickup resumes as District Council 33 members vote on new contract
Philadelphia let out a collective sigh of relief on Monday as curbside trash pickup resumed in the city following the week-long District Council 33 strike that saw piles of trash grown on streets and sidewalks in the absence of the sanitation department.
Philadelphia streets and sidewalks will be much cleaner starting Monday when normal curbside trash collection continues in the city.
Thousands of District Council 33 members who spent the last week-plus on the picket lines headed back to work on Monday.
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District Council 33 president on end of strike, new contract: 'I'm still quite frustrated'
While Mayor Cherelle Parker and city leaders celebrated the end of the District Council 33 strike on Wednesday, union bosses remained dejected about the outcome.
Philadelphia's largest blue-collar union will vote this week to ratify the new contract, which includes a 14% wage increase over Mayor Cherelle Parker's four-year term.
"This is a very significant investment in our employees, while at the same time ensuring that we, as a city, are living within our means," said Parker, who all along vowed to find a "fair" and "fiscally responsible" offer.
How will District Council 33 members vote?
District Council 33 President Greg Boulware said he is "still quite frustrated" by the union's new three-year contract and how the strike played out.
He joined Good Day Philadelphia on Thursday to voice his displeasure with the tentative contract, which passed a union leadership vote 21-5.
"Our members are very frustrated with how the administration has dealt with us and not truly recognize the issues we're facing on a regular basis," he said.
Boulware claims there were several factors that played a role in the union accepting what they believe is an unsatisfactory deal, including fatigue from striking union members and injunctions that he claims the city used to try to "pick us apart."
The union believes that Mayor Parker's claim that the 14% raise over the next four-years is the highest increase of any mayor in their first term in the last 30 years is bending the truth because that percentage includes the one-year contract extension.
"To connect that particular aspect to what we're currently going through is a little bit of a falsehood, it's changing words around," Boulware said. "This particular one that they were offering was 8.75% increase for our members, we wound up settling for a little more than that, but that's not the truth about what exactly was going on."
Despite the ill-feelings about the deal, Boulware said he remains "hopeful" that the new contract will be ratified by union members.
The backstory:
District Council 33 members took to the picket lines on July 1 after a midnight deadline to find a new contract came and went without a deal.
The strike came hours after Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker rolled out a contingency plan in the event District Council members walked off the job.
With sanitation workers on strike, Parker said there would be no trash pick-up and Philly residents would have to haul their garbage to a dedicated dumping site.
This caused mounds of trash to pour out of dumpsters and overwhelm sidewalks, as the city struggled to make up for the absence of its sanitation department.
DC 33 to begin voting on tentative agreement Monday
On Monday, Philadelphia?s largest municipal workers' union, AFSCME District Council 33, will begin voting on the tentative agreement reached with the city.
The strike also meant service disruptions to Philadelphia's water department for things like water main breaks and street cave-ins.
In the heat of summer, over a dozen Philadelphia pools were forced to close, and recreation centers needed to cut hours.
District Council 33 members took to the picket lines on July 1 after a midnight deadline to find a new contract came and went without a deal.
The strike came hours after Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker rolled out a contingency plan in the event District Council members walked off the job.
With sanitation workers on strike, Parker said there would be no trash pick-up and Philly residents would have to haul their garbage to a dedicated dumping site.
Dig deeper:
Before a deal was reached, Parker claimed the 12% wage increase being offered by the city was the largest raise a mayor in their first term has extended in the last 30 years.
Ed Rendell increased District Council 33 wages by 5% in his first term as mayor. John Street dolled out a 9% increase during his first four years in office. Michael Nutter didn't raise wages at all in his first term. And former mayor Jim Kenney gave out a 11.5% raise to District Council 33 members in his first term.
"That increase of more than 12%, it will represent the largest one-term pay increase for District Council 33 from any mayor in more than 3 decades," Parker said.
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District Council 33 reaches tentative contract agreement with City of Philadelphia
The City of Philadelphia and District Council 33 have come to a tentative agreement on a new contract.
In her first year alone, Parker said the city and the union agreed to a 5% pay increase – the largest one-year wage bump that the union has seen in three decades.
"For an average District Council 33 worker, that meant an average annual pay increase of $2,383," Parker said. "If the workforce of District Council 33 accepts the proposal that we have already put on the table for them, their pay increase will total over 12%."
The two sides ended up agreeing to a three-year contract with a 14% raise over Parker's four years in office, and a 1-year contract extension to the deal they agreed to last year.