Police responded to AFSCME District Council 33′s offices after union leaders allegedly got into a fight

A months-long showdown over control of Philadelphia’s largest union for city workers allegedly turned physical Monday morning, with police responding to the union’s headquarters after a candidate for the presidency accused the interim president of accosting him.

Greg Boulware, who is running to be president of the 9,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33, said he was in the offices of the union’s health and welfare fund Monday morning when his rival in the runoff election, interim president Omar Salaam, stormed in.

“Mr. Salaam walked in, and he said, ‘I told you before to keep my name out of your mouth,’ and he told me to stand up,” Boulware said. “I told him to get out of here multiple times.”

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Boulware said he eventually stood up and was injured above his eye when Salaam punched him and “got probably one good shot in.” Boulware said he fought back in self-defense and “locked him up.” The fracas left a hole in the wall, Boulware said, and Salaam had left by the time police arrived.

Salaam did not respond to a request for comment left at his union office, and attempts to reach him directly were unsuccessful.

Police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp said no one was arrested as of Monday afternoon. He said officers responded to the union hall at 30th and Walnut Streets at about 11:30 a.m. Monday when a man — whom he could not identify because police do not typically identify people involved in or victimized by crimes before charges are filed — said he had been assaulted by another man, who was no longer on scene.

Gripp said the incident remains under investigation by Southwest Detectives.

D.C. 33 represents more than a dozen locals and about 9,000 blue-collar city workers.

Boulware is the business agent of Local 394, which represents Water Department workers. He is politically aligned with former D.C. 33 president Ernest Garrett, who was ousted from his position in February by the union’s international after being accused by Salaam and others of making decisions on staff salaries and expenditures without the approval of the union’s boards. (Garrett has denied wrongdoing.)

Salaam then became interim president and is running for a full term. He and Boulware advanced to a runoff, which is an ongoing mail ballot election that ends June 11.

Boulware said he has not spoken ill of Salaam on the campaign trail and instead believes his rival was angry because preliminary tallies had come out that appeared to be favorable for Boulware. (The preliminary results do not show who is winning, but rather which locals the votes are coming from, Boulware said. It was clear he had an edge based on voting patterns so far, he said.)

Salaam previously led Local 427, which represents sanitation workers. In a high-profile moment during last year’s mayoral election, Salaam’s local and another that represents streets workers endorsed the eventual winner, Cherelle L. Parker, despite the rest of D.C. 33 endorsing candidate Jeff Brown under Garrett’s leadership.

Boulware said one difference in their platforms is that Salaam appears amenable to Parker’s plan for D.C. 33 and other municipal unions to sign one-year contract extensions this year, instead of multiyear deals, as her first-year administration gets its bearings. Boulware said he instead is pushing for a traditional multiyear deal.

But as is often the case with Philadelphia union politics and D.C. 33 in particular, the story behind the dispute is not nearly that simple, and it is in some ways a continuation of a decades-old rivalry.

Garrett ousted longtime D.C. 33 leader Herman “Pete” Matthews in a 2020 election that was seen as a shocking upset. Matthews, in turn, made his name in the early 1990s as an antagonist of his predecessor, James Sutton, who became infamous in the union after agreeing to significant concessions in a contract with then-Mayor Ed Rendell’s administration.

Consequently, Garrett and now Boulware are seen by some as successors to Sutton’s supporters. When he was president, Garrett hired Sutton’s wife, Evon Sutton, to be the union’s political director. But he has also called Sutton’s Rendell-era contract the worst “of our union’s history.”

Salaam and his supporters are in turn viewed as continuing Matthews’ legacy.

After he assumed the presidency from Garrett, Salaam said he was hoping to help calm things down at the union.

“Now, we’re just trying to stabilize,” he said in March.