Judge orders some striking DC 33 members back to work, puts limits on picketing; where to throw away trash

A striking city worker was arrested Tuesday morning for allegedly slashing a Philadelphia Water Department truck’s tires, causing about $3,000 in damage, according to a police source.

A person was recorded opening fire hydrants on the block of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s home in what the mayor said may have been an attempt to hinder city water service.

Picketers blocked police officers from entering a trash yard to investigate reports of vandalism.

More Philadelphia City Council members are starting to weigh in on the DC 33 strike.

Many supported the union’s efforts and DC 33’s right for a fair contract.

Councilmember Jim Harrity, known for his union ties, wrote in a statement to The Inquirer Tuesday: “As a 20-year member of laborers local #57, I stand with my union brothers and sisters from DC33.”

Philadelphia scored early court victories on first day of the largest municipal worker strike in decades, as a judge approved three injunctions sought by the city.

Less than an hour after District Council 33's midnight strike announcement, the city filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction that would force essential Philadelphia Water Department employees to report to their job to ensure safe drinking water and wastewater services.

On Tuesday afternoon, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas-Street issued an order granting the city the injunction prohibiting certain PWD staff, such as some science technicians and water treatment plant operators, to return to their regular shift work as part of a skeleton crew.

Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson said DC 33 members “are not just employees; they are the heart of our city’s daily operations. Every day, our municipal workers show up when it matters most.”

Gilmore Richardson, the highest-ranking official from Council that has weighed in on the strike, said in a statement Tuesday: “I stand with DC 33 in their pursuit of a fair and just contract that recognizes their invaluable contributions.”

Council President Kenyatta Johnson has not yet commented on his personal position on the strike, but he has directed constituents to information about the strike and the city's contingency plans on social media.

What’s the procedure for throwing away trash during the DC 33 strike?

Residents should dispose of their trash at one of the city’s 60-plus temporary drop off locations on their regular collection day, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. Nothing should placed on the curb.

The city began to set up temporary trash collection sites Tuesday morning, which will remain in place for the strike’s duration. About 90% of those sites were open to the public as of Tuesday afternoon, Director of Clean & Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said, and they will operate from 6 a.m to 10 p.m.

As the strike deadline loomed Monday night, the Philadelphia Police Department moved two hours early at 10 p.m. to consolidate its police radio dispatching bands.

For example, all police radio activity in the Southwest band moved to the West band, all dispatching in the Far Northeast moved to the Northeast band. With limited available personnel, the dispatch workload in many cases was doubled on fewer radio bands.

Since the consolidation, there have been no reports of major problems responding to calls for police help, or coordinating officers as they handled more serious incidents.

The City of Philadelphia is plowing ahead with three injunctions it filed against DC 33 over which workers can participate in the strike — and how that strike unfolds, Law Department representative Andrew Richman said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.

The city was granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday against DC 33 that would force striking 911 operators to return to work, said Richmond. The city’s call center typically staffs hundreds, leaving the police department to pull patrol officers to work to handle dispatch after an abridged training, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel told reporters.

The city also filed a similar injunction calling some striking Water Department employees back to work. These DC 33 members perform “critical” maintenance and water purification duties, Richman said. Their absence could cause “the potential failure” of water treatment and waste management facilities, threatening “the healthy and safety of hundreds of thousands” of city residents, Richman claimed.

Philadelphia teachers are being encouraged to show up on the picket lines to support striking city workers.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the school district’s largest union with 14,000 teacher, nurse, secretary, counselor and other workers, are watching DC33 negotiations closely; their contract expires at the end of August.

The PFT has already voted to authorize a strike if the executive board decides to call one.

At a temporary waste site at South 18th Street and Catharine Street, residents dropped off bags of trash, recycling, and even an old hot water tank. Two city sanitation workers, both members of the Philly Future Track public service program and not in the union, said they had already seen hundreds of people stop by. Earlier in the morning, they say they transferred around 500 bags of trash from a nearby street corner to the dumpster.

Dan Schauble, a local landlord, brought a van full of trash cans from his six-unit apartment building to the drop-off site. He says garbage hasn’t been collected at the property since last Monday.

“I came here to help my tenants,” Schauble said. “I’m gonna help where I can.”

The City of Philadelphia "is ready, willing, and able” to go back to the bargaining table with District Council 33 after stalled negotiations resulted in the union's first strike since 1986, Mayor Cherelle Parker told reporters at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

AFSCME DC33 is the city’s largest municipal worker’s union and represents about 9,000 blue collar employees across Philadelphia’s sanitation, parks & recreation, streets, and water departments, among others. They walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday after their contract expired. Already, trash pickup has ceased, while pools, libraries, and city-operated health centers have closed.

Parker said that the city was “laser focused on providing essential city services” throughout the duration of strike, with public health and safety departments as the core focus. She also was keen on defending the city’s contract offer.

It's a well-known tactic in labor negotiations: Labor asks for sharp pay increases. Management returns with a far lower figure. And the two sides haggle until agreeing to meet in the middle.

But Ray, a retired DC33 member who only gave his first name due to his status as a former union member, expressed surprise his longtime union moved to strike at all amid the back-and-forth.

"There's no way in the world she's going to give them eight percent," Ray, who was perusing the aisles of the Cheltenham ShopRite with his wife, said of Mayor Parker. The municipal workers' union's preferred terms, he said, were unprecedented — even given the rising cost of living since the last contract.

Philadelphia has asked a judge to prevent District Council 33’s striking workers from picketing on city property, alleging that mass pickets outside of Philadelphia International Airport, trash drop-off sites, and water treatment plants, among other locations, created delays and obstructions to city functions.

The request for a preliminary injunction says that while the workers have a constitutional right to spread awareness for their cause through picketing, they are not allowed to block access to city property and worksites.

“The picketers are not simply patrolling in an effort to publicize their dispute, but are purposefully massing at entranceways and interfering with Plaintiff’s normal operations and the right of the public to free access near the facility,” the filing said.

Bri Sanders, 24, who just moved out to Montgomery county from Philadelphia, said her family members have been complaining to her about having to drop off their own trash because of the strike. But at the same time, she and her family understand the city workers’ point of view, and supports their fight for better wages.

“What really can you do? You can’t really be upset, you’re not in their shoes,” she said. Sanders came into the city to take her 3 year old daughter to the Franklin institute, but had to shelter from the afternoon rain along the way. She pointed to the elements as another reason why workers who have to make sure the city nonetheless runs on schedule should be paid more.

“Especially like this, they’re only going to get paid minimum wage?” She said.

DC 33's strike comes amid a stretch of large events and a deluge of international scrutiny in Philadelphia: Fourth of July celebrations culminate Friday, the same day FIFA's Club World Cup wraps local programming with a quarterfinal at Lincoln Financial Field.

Judeah Folt, the owner of Catherine's Cakes near the intersection of Ogontz Avenue and Washington Lane, expressed hope all the Independence Day hullabaloo would press city and union negotiators to strike a deal sooner.

"Even just normal people, just doing cookouts, having family over, is going to accumulate a lot of trash," Folt, whose bakery also holds four tenants, said.

Councilmember Kendra Brooks, a member of the progressive Working Families Party, said in a statement to The Inquirer Tuesday that part of the reason she voted no on the Fiscal Year 2026 budget last month was because she felt it did not support city workers and services.

"I voted no on the budget because I saw the City giving tax breaks to corporations at the expense of our city services and our city workers,” Brooks said in a statement Tuesday. “Working-class Philadelphians are tired of being left behind, and I will stand with the members of DC33 every step of the way."

Brooks also attended the DC 33 rally Monday.

Local labor leaders expressed their support of DC33 workers Tuesday.

“Going on strike is never an easy decision to make,” Danny Bauder, president of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, said in a statement shared via email. “The members of DC 33 are bravely standing up not only for their rights, wages, and working conditions but also for all workers, union or not, who are seeking justice in the workplace.”

Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO encompasses more than 100 labor unions locally. Bauder said the council has been working with affiliates and partners to recruit people to the picket lines and ensure that those who are striking are fed and safe.

The city has asked a state judge to order striking employees of the 911 call center to return to work, saying the work stoppage “poses unacceptable threats to public health, safety and welfare.”

The 325 workers at the city’s 911 call center are among the 9,000 municipal workers who went on strike early Tuesday. Workers who staffed the call center walked off the job mid-shift last night, according to the complaint, which was filed late Tuesday morning in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Except for one trainee from the fire department, no other employee showed up to their morning shift Tuesday morning, the suit says.

The Free Library officially had closed all of its branches by midday Tuesday, except for the Library for Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians, according to Free Library spokesperson Mark Graham.

“We’re working best as possible to open several branches and be present for Philadelphia,” he said.

Parkway Central branch municipal guard Dhafir Gerald will always be grateful to the city of Philadelphia for giving him a second chance. Gerald, 48, was once incarcerated, but started working for the city six years ago. Now, he’s proud to work for the city and loves what he does. But he also wants to be paid a more fair and livable wage for the work he’s providing.

Councilmember Cindy Bass said the writing was on the wall for DC 33’s requested pay increase as prices rise and as it continues to be the lowest-paid of Philly's four major municipal unions.

“We cannot expect that they will not require more for their services, and it's only fair,” Bass said in an interview Tuesday. “But I was hopeful that we would have a resolution sooner and … I do know that everyone is actively working on finding that resolution.”

She noted that she has confidence this will be resolved quickly. When asked if she would be out at any picket lines, Bass said: “I'm planning to be anywhere that I'm asked to be by any of the parties to help facilitate a resolution.”

Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke said DC 33 workers are “like so many Philadelphians, fighting to stay economically afloat” and “to hear that the city’s ‘final, best offer’ fails to make that possible for municipal workers is a damn shame, and it’s hard to square with any notion of responsibility.”

“You can’t build a just city by breaking the backs of the people who clean it, pave it, and keep it running,” O’Rourke, a member of the progressive Working Families Party, said in a statement to The Inquirer Tuesday.

O’Rourke said it’s a matter of workers being able to “afford life’s essentials after 40 or more hours on the job, week after week.”

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier said in an interview Tuesday that the DC 33 strike came as a surprise as she hoped the high stakes of the situation would eventually bring the city and the union to an agreement and wants to see all parties back at the negotiating table.

“I never imagined that it was going to get here,” said Gauthier, who represents the 3rd councilmanic district.

More than 9,000 city employees are on strike going into a holiday weekend and marking the first major strike of city workers since 1986.

Some services at eight city-run health centers may be delayed or unavailable because of the strike, Philadelphia health officials wrote in a statement posted to the health centers' web page Tuesday.

Health department spokesperson James Garrow said that services at the health centers will be dependent on staffing levels. Patients with upcoming appointments at the health centers will be notified if their appointments are canceled or changed from in-person to virtual.

Starting Tuesday, lab work, mammographies, and X-rays will not be available at the health centers. The department will instead refer patients to "partner health institutions" that have the capacity to deliver those services, Garrow said.

Nicetown’s regular Tuesday trash day is passing by; the smell of last week's uncollected garbage is already wafting toward the Wayne Junction Regional Rail station. One of more than five dozen collection sites sits close by, but postal worker Tempest Bolton said the dropoff’s presence simply underscored the city’s irresponsibility in not striking a deal.

“Who's the city paying to pick that up?” Bolton said. “We’re coming off the Eagles’ Super Bowl weekend. We’re coming up on Fourth of July weekend. And they’re going to do [DC 33 workers] like that.”

On Germantown and St. Paul Streets, construction workers making upgrades to Nicetown Park said residents had begun leaving unclaimed trash bags at the curb by the park once it became clear the sanitation strike could leave the trash on sidewalks for days.

Clerical staff and medical assistants blocked the entrance to Health Center 6 at 321 W. Girard Ave., one of eight city-operated healthcare facilities. They were joined on the picket line by nurses and midwives, who held signs with messages of solidarity with the union.

Early this morning, strikers padlocked the entrances to the facility. By around 9 a.m., law enforcement had cut the locks.

Although the health center is technically open, patients are being turned away. Contractors are still at work inside, but some services, like lab work, are unavailable.

The DC 33 strike has caused the majority of the city’s Free Library branches to shut down on Tuesday. While most Philly librarians are members of DC 47, the majority of library staffers, including custodians and security guards, are members of the striking DC 33.

“Without them, there’s absolutely no way to open a library,” said a member of DC 47 who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

On Monday, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker's administration directed the Free Library to consolidate its services to keep 16 of 54 citywide branches open and for DC 47 members to report to those locations, despite picket lines in front of some of them Tuesday morning. Those locations include the Parkway Central, Northeast Regional, Kingsessing, and Kensington branches, among others.

DC 33 picket lines could be seen all across Philadelphia on Tuesday morning as the union's 9,000 workers officially went on strike.

“Over the past 20 years we went from blue collar workers to poverty level workers,” said Stacy Needle-Singleton, a Philadelphia Water Department worker picketing the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant.

Needle-Singleton, 53, said her mother, stepfather, and husband worked for the water department and she's experienced firsthand how their pay doesn't stretch as far. Workers said the "unfair wages" and disrespect and disregard they felt for their grueling work were why they were ready to picket for as long as necessary.

Taylor Thompson did not come alone to the picket line at City Hall. She also brought her 8-month-old daughter, Reign, in a stroller.

“You can’t save with this type of salary,” she said. “You can’t survive.”

Thompson has been looking for a house for her and her daughter, but she can’t find anything affordable, even with her 311 salary and paychecks from a second job.

Dozens of DC 33 workers clad in neon vests that identified them as sanitation workers and equipped with signs that read “on strike” picketed at the Citizen Convenience Center for Recycling and Trash in Port Richmond.

The facility is one of six sanitation facility centers the mayor has asked residents to use for garbage drop off instead of placing bags on the curb. There are picket lines at all six sanitation centers.

To use the centers would be crossing the picket line, according to union members who have been at the Port Richmond facility since Monday night.

The Philadelphia city worker strike of 2025 has begun.

Greg Boulware, president of District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called for an immediate and indefinite work stoppage of the more than 9,000 municipal employees he represents after contract negotiations with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration fell apart late Monday night.

Boulware delivered the news at exactly midnight to his negotiating team, which burst out in applause at the Community College of Philadelphia’s Career and Advanced Technology Center in West Philadelphia, where Monday evening’s negotiations took place.

Tanya Ray, 55, has been a city worker and a DC 33 member for almost a decade. Recently, she began looking for a second job to make ends meet.

“I need it to be able to live comfortably, I am done living paycheck to paycheck,” Ray said.

She isn’t trying to live in luxury, but as a Philadelphia water department meter shop support clerk, she thought her work would be enough to feed her daughter and afford retirement.

AFSCME District Council 33 represents a wide swath of city employees who perform manual labor and skilled trades. Known colloquially as DC 33, its members hold jobs in a variety of city agencies, including in the streets, sanitation, and parks and recreation departments, as well as in corrections and the Philadelphia Housing Authority. DC 33 workers include police dispatchers, trash collectors, water treatment plant operators, and others.

Though it is the largest city workers union, it is also the lowest-paid of Philadelphia’s four major municipal unions, with members earning about $46,000 a year on average. It is also the only union of the big four in which a majority of its members are Black, The Inquirer previously reported.

Historically, DC 33 has played a key role in city politics, including during the adoption of the Home Rule Charter, which essentially serves as the city’s version of the Constitution, in the 1950s. Its internal politics are also fiery, owing to a factional power struggle that has been playing out since the 1990s.