A Philly white-collar city workers union is at a standstill on contract negotiations as members vote on authorizing a strike

Another Philadelphia city workers union is going head-to-head with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration at the bargaining table.

Representatives of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 47, which represents white-collar workers, spent approximately nine hours in contract negotiations with the city on Friday before walking out, DC 47 president April Gigetts told The Inquirer on Saturday. Gigetts said the union does not have a date to return to the bargaining table.

DC 47 is negotiating a contract for its two municipal unions under the executive branch — Local 2186 and Local 2187 — after leaders decided to extend contracts that expired on July 1 to July 15.

Out of the two unions, Local 2187, which represents administrative assistants and professionals, is the only one legally allowed to go on strike, and its members are participating in a strike authorization vote that will conclude Tuesday.

Local 2186 represents supervisors in various city agencies. A handful of states allow supervisors to unionize, but with limitations, like Pennsylvania’s strike ban.

According to the union’s original contract proposal from May, which Local 2187 posted to its Instagram account Saturday, the union is calling for 8% wage increases each year for four years and for a pay scale under which no DC 47 job title will start below $50,000 per year. Local 2187 also attached the city’s original proposal from May, which does not outline specific wage figures but says that “Wage increases [are] consistent with the City’s ability to pay and the Five Year Plan.”

Tuesday is the earliest that Local 2187 could go on strike, but Gigetts appears to be taking a wait-and-see approach, unlike her AFSCME counterpart in DC 33, president Greg Boulware, who treated July 1 as a hard deadline to call for a strike. Gigetts — who recommended workers vote yes on the strike authorization — noted that DC 47 leadership wants to see the results of the vote first and that other options, like extending the contract again, could be on the table.

“We would collectively get together and decide where we are in the process and make that decision once we get the authority from the membership to do so,” Gigetts said. “We’re not there yet. Tuesday, we’ll count up the votes once the negotiating team has the authority to do so. They’ll make a decision at that time which way they want to go.”

But, she said, “DC 47 is no stranger to collective action.”

“The city does not negotiate in public,” Parker spokesperson Joe Grace said. “We remain hopeful and will continue to work at reaching agreement with AFSCME District Council 47.”

Local 2187 president Jesse Jordan told members in the Instagram video posted Saturday that leaders will not call a strike unless certain criteria are met.

“One, an impasse with the city, meaning that we are sitting at the table and no new ideas are being exchanged. Or two, we have to receive the city’s last and best final offer. At that point, we will come back to you concerning a strike, but we hope to come to you guys with a tentative agreement,” Jordan said.

Gigetts said the union felt it had been making progress with the city over the last several weeks, but “at the end of the day, when the rubber hits the roads, you have to have a comprehensive package that makes sense.”

“After nine hours, and many, many hours waiting to get a counter, the numbers and the package, quite frankly, was insulting, and we really wanted to come to an agreement,” Gigetts added of Friday’s negotiations.

Gigetts said sticking points in negotiations include wages and healthcare, but she declined to address the specifics of either the union’s or the city’s proposals.

She said negotiations got to a point where it didn’t “make any sense anymore to continue when you don’t feel folks are taking you seriously and offering something fair.”

“You get at a point where you just have to walk away and wait and see if they want to take you seriously,” she said.

As DC 47 tallies the strike authorization votes Tuesday, AFSCME District Council 33 will be in the middle of its own membership vote to ratify its tentative contract agreement with the city.

More than 9,000 city employees who are members of DC 33, the large blue-collar city union, went on strike for more than eight days before reaching a tentative deal with the Parker administration early Wednesday, and members will be voting until July 20 on whether to accept that deal.

DC 47 had been fairly quiet during DC 33’s strike, but Gigetts said Saturday that “we’ve had solidarity from the entire process.”

“We had our members being as supportive as we could with District Council 33,” Gigetts said. “I realize that we did have the [contract] extension, but we still stand in solidarity. We still celebrate, we still support.”

As AFSCME siblings, DC 33 and DC 47 rarely — if ever — criticize each other publicly, though they have different constituencies and have diverged at key moments. Their contracts contain a “most favored nations” clause that can allow one union to capitalize off the other if the second union to complete negotiations reaches a better deal.

There has also been a historical expectation that DC 47 waits for DC 33 to resolve any contract issues before making its own deals with the city — a show of solidarity.

Gigetts said she planned to call Boulware on Saturday to tell him that Locals 2186 and 2187 have checks they have been meaning to provide to DC 33’s strike fund.

“We have been in solidarity. I mean, at this point, we’re focused on trying to negotiate our own contract, and that’s kind of where we are,” Gigetts said.

While DC 47 may not be aching to strike, Gigetts said, the negotiation process has not been easy.

“It’s unusually difficult,” she said.