Judge orders some DC 33 members back to work and limits picketing as Philly mounts legal response to strike

City Solicitor Renee Garcia was prepared for District Council 33’s strike.

The strike was barely 50 minutes old when the city filed a lawsuit in the Common Pleas Court, asking a judge to require certain Philadelphia Water Department employees to return to work. Garcia personally served DC 33 president Greg Boulware with the injunction.

By late Tuesday afternoon, a judge had granted that request and two others, ordering some DC 33 members to return to work and placing limits on picketing, as the city unleashed a legal offensive after the union representing more than 9,000 city employees rejected a contract that Mayor Cherelle L. Parker called “our best offer, our final offer.”

In addition to requiring a “limited number” of water department workers to fulfill “its mandate to provide fresh, clean drinking water and wastewater treatment,” the city had asked a judge on Tuesday to require the 325 unionized workers of the 911 call center dispatch to return to work to prevent delays in answering 911 calls and dispatching police, firefighters, and ambulances.

And the city and a Cozen O’Conner attorney had asked a judge to prevent DC 33 members and “sympathizers” from mass picketing outside city trash drop-off centers, Philadelphia International Airport, the Municipal Services Building, and water treatment plants, alleging that the picketers were blocking entry to the municipal facilities.

In a news conference Tuesday afternoon, city officials said that in some instances, picketers engaged in vandalism.

“We will respect you. We do respect you,” Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said, addressing DC 33 workers. “But we cannot respect when you get outside of bounds and engage in activity that is destructive and calling for harm to others.”

By late Tuesday afternoon, Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas-Street granted injunctions in all three cases.

Thomas-Street ordered 237 of 325 dispatchers and a skeleton crew of water plant workers to return to their regular shifts, and limited the number of people who can picket in proximity to the entrance of city facilities to eight.

Ava Schwembler, a spokesperson for the Law Department, declined to comment on the overall legal strategy in response to the strike but said the city remains committed to providing residents with “exemplary services throughout ongoing contract negotiations.”

DC 33 did not respond to requests for comment about the lawsuits.

The injunction requests are “par for the course” when it comes to a city responding to a strike, said Francis Ryan, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.

“Any union leaders going into a strike know that this is going to be thrown at them,” Ryan said. “It’s not at all unusual.”

The issue of maintaining Philadelphia’s water supply goes all the way back to a 1944 strike of municipal workers. It came up again in a strike during the 1960s, and again in the infamous “trash strike” of 1986.

In that strike, a judge found that piling trash over 16 days presented a threat to the health of city residents, and ordered sanitation workers to return to work.

What union leaders have done in the past, according to Ryan, is comply with court orders with a skeleton crew that can ensure safety while keeping services to the absolute minimum.

“It doesn’t really defeat the objective of the strike, which is to slow and impede services,” the labor professor said. “I think that’s what we are going to see here as well.”

Injunctions that limit pickets are also not out of the norm.

For example, in 2016, a Philadelphia judge ordered that no more than six striking workers could picket outside the entrance of Verizon offices at a time without causing disruptions to people entering and exiting. And in 2009, striking workers were allowed to picket three at a time outside the Spring Garden Street location of the American Red Cross to ensure the protest did not interfere with blood shipments to hospitals.