Striking city workers bring protest to July 4 parade — and the union says it’s ready to bargain again

As marching bands strode across Independence Mall to kick off the city’s annual July Fourth parade, their snares and horns sounded weak beneath the chants of striking union workers.

“No contract, no peace!”

“Philly is a union town. If we don’t get it, shut it down!”

“DC 33! DC 33!”

On the fourth day of the first major municipal strike in decades, District Council 33 members brought their own brigade to the city’s annual Independence Day celebration, reminding paradegoers that more than 9,000 municipal workers remain deadlocked with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration over a new contract.

As protest and patriotism clashed, the union also signaled readiness to return to the negotiation table for the first time in two days — and potentially budge on the key issue of raises for workers.

Greg Boulware, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33, said the union would send Parker’s administration a new contract proposal on Friday and will “hopefully” return to the bargaining table Saturday.

“We provide these services for everybody here inside the city of Philadelphia, and it’s not sustainable at this point in time, and we need a quality raise,” Boulware said in an interview at the parade.

But in a sign that there may soon be movement over that previously intractable sticking point, Boulware said that, when it comes to wages, the union will “have to adjust that a little bit.”

On Friday night, a union spokesperson said negotiations would resume Saturday afternoon.

A softening of the union’s previous demand for a contract with annual raises of 5% would mark the first sign of movement on pay increases since Boulware called a strike at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

Ever since, Parker has insisted on a contract with raises of no more than 3% annually, while the union leader has said 5% was a minimum for him.

Boulware stressed that while wages were “paramount,” the union was also trying to make progress on issues including hazard pay for city employees who work in dangerous conditions and a softening of the rule that requires DC 33 employees to live in Philadelphia.

Despite the potential for progress in negotiations, tensions remained high in the streets Friday.

Hundreds of DC 33 members and their supporters flanked Market Street around 10 a.m., steps from where red-white-and-blue parade floats, bedazzled dancers, and military personnel queued up to march.

» READ MORE: DC 33 made concessions in 1992. Decades of resentment since led to Philadelphia’s current city worker strike

Meanwhile, a block away, Parker delivered her July Fourth address at Independence Hall — out of earshot from the roaring crowd. In addition to touting her accomplishments, Parker acknowledged the ongoing strike and said that, while the discourse was “divisive at times,” she respected the union’s right to protest. A handful of DC 33 members held up protest signs during her remarks.

Union supporters passed out handbills to curious tourists nearby — asking if they had heard of “our garbage mayor,” a pun on the mountains of waste that have accumulated in the streets since Tuesday.

The strike has represented one of the most politically turbulent episodes during Parker’s time in office. The mayor has maintained that holding ground on wage increases, while unpopular, is fiscally necessary for the city amid threats of federal funding cuts under President Donald Trump.

But the trash continues to pile up as sanitation workers stay on the picket line. Some disgruntled residents have already dubbed the city’s uncollected trash mountains “Parker piles."

On Friday, Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said the department had received multiple reports of fires at trash collection sites across the city. All were extinguished without causing significant damage, he said, but he called the blazes “a serious matter” and said they were under investigation by police and a task force of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Bethel acknowledged the tensions surrounding the strike, but said that if authorities determine that any of the fires were intentionally set, “such acts will be treated as serious crimes.”

As contract negotiations continue in an effort to end the strike, the displeasure has gone both ways, with the mayor trading barbs with Boulware throughout the week.

“We know there’s high alert for the authorities with our people out there,” the union president said. “The mayor is currently not happy with our folks right now. But this is America and we are a union and we are voicing our opinions.”

DC 33 members on Friday were also reeling after two members were severely injured in a hit-and-run while on the picket line on Delaware Avenue late Thursday night.

Boulware said he was proud of the support he’d seen from the union — and beyond. He praised actor and rapper LL Cool J and coheadliner Jazmine Sullivan for canceling their scheduled performances at the July Fourth concert on the Ben Franklin Parkway in solidarity with the striking workers.

Boulware said he wasn’t against people enjoying the festivities.

At the same time, he lamented that members of other unions had already crossed the picket line to work for the city in preparation for the holiday weekend.

“That’s a shock to me,” he said. “That’s not something that typically happens in a union town like Philadelphia.”

Parade attendees didn’t appear bothered by the extra commotion — and many were vocal about their support for the workers.

Clad in flag colors, Maggie Sell and her husband come to the parade every year from Audubon, N.J., to show their patriotic flare and grab an all-American burger at P.J. Clarke’s.

An immigrant from Scotland in the 1970s, Sell said the parade-side picket line made her appreciate free speech protections in the U.S. And she said she planned to call the mayor to tell her to “give them the money.”

“Sanitation workers, those poor people have been struggling,” Sell said. “If you can’t afford to live, what does that say about society?”

Inquirer photographer Kaiden Yu contributed to this article.