Piles of trash, pickets, and public addresses: Scenes from the DC 33 strike
Signs of the strike were visible throughout the city as mounds of trash, dubbed ‘Parker Piles,’ grew over eight days. Here’s what it looked like.
After eight days and four hours, the first major city worker strike since 1986 came to an end early Wednesday morning. With its conclusion, the largest municipal union’s 9,000 members — including 911 dispatchers, library employees, and, yes, sanitation workers — were slated to return to their jobs immediately.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Greg Boulware, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33, reached an agreement for a new contract about 4 a.m. Wednesday after several failed negotiating sessions. It was, Parker said in a statement, “good news” for the union’s members, as well as Philadelphia residents and businesses.
Boulware, however, had a different take.
“The strike is over, and nobody’s happy,” Boulware said as he exited negotiations. “We felt our clock was running out.”
The clock began running at 12:01 a.m. July 1, the minute the union’s last contract expired, and the first moment Boulware was legally allowed to declare a strike. With that, Philadelphians saw a number of city services curtailed, including the closure of some public pools, reduced rec center hours, and shuttered libraries.
But, as in 1986, the most obvious change was the suspension of trash collection. Mounds of trash — dubbed “Parker Piles” by the public — grew around Philadelphia, both at illegal dumping sites and at 60 temporary drop-off sites established by the city.
As, trash accumulated citywide, the city turned to nonunion workers and sanitation trainees to help manage its removal. And while officials expected the drop-off sites’ dumpsters to be “serviced multiple times a day,” they could often be seen overflowing with trash.
“Across the board, we are seeing an unprecedented amount of trash in our district that we are not used to,” City Councilmember Anthony Phillips, who represents the 9th Council District, told The Inquirer Tuesday.
Parker’s administration also turned to the courts to send some striking DC 33 employees back to their jobs in areas impacting public health and safety. Before the strike ended, the city won four court orders requiring some 911 dispatchers, water department employees, airport workers, and medical examiner’s office staffers to return to work.
Tensions appeared to peak Thursday, one day ahead of Philadelphia’s Fourth of July celebration on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Atop the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Parker gave an impassioned speech as DC 33 members and their supporters mounted a protest on the opposite side of Eakins Oval.
Throughout a number of unfruitful negotiating sessions, neither side appeared to budge much from their initial proposals, and several sticking points remained alongside the issue of DC 33 members’ wages. Members made an average of $46,000 a year, and are the lowest-paid municipal union workers in the city.
Ultimately, city officials and union leaders agreed to a contract that included 3% annual raises for DC 33 members — a figure close to Parker’s initial offer, and below the 5% for which Boulware initially called. The contract also includes $1,500 bonuses, as well as the creation of a fifth step in the union pay scale.
“I want you to know this,” Parker said to union members at an emotional Wednesday news conference. “Your city values you and the work that you do every day for our residents.”
Here is what the July 2025 trash strike looked like.