How the AFSCME DC 33 strike exposed fault lines in Philly’s labor movement
Unions in the city were caught between backing DC 33 and maintaining relationships with the mayor.

Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO president Danny Bauder, who was elected in 2022, went into office with the goal of making the local labor movement more united.
“My role is to help us see the bigger picture, help us see the need for greater solidarity, especially with what’s happening in Washington,” said Bauder, whose organization is a sprawling and politically powerful federation of labor groups.
The first major city workers strike in four decades — an eight-day work stoppage by District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — seemed like an ideal rallying cry for Bauder’s vision.
Instead, it showed why unity is so hard to achieve. While many unions came to DC 33’s aid, the strike also exposed fault lines in organized labor as the community braces for potential forthcoming disputes involving Philadelphia schoolteachers and SEPTA workers.
During the DC 33 ordeal — in which members of the city’s largest and lowest-paid collective bargaining unit walked off the job, stalling services for more than a week in demand of higher wages — Philadelphia unions found themselves in the difficult position of having to choose between supporting the roughly 9,000 blue-collar municipal workers on strike and maintaining relationships with their employer, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.
The two sides came to a tentative contract agreement early Wednesday in which Parker largely got what she wanted by keeping raises at 3% per year, rather than the 5% increases the union sought.
But tensions remain high in labor circles about the preceding week’s events, particularly over work that some members of the building trades unions did to help the Parker administration maintain normalcy during the work stoppage by helping to set up and produce the Wawa Welcome America concert on July Fourth.
“The laborers and the stagehands worked the Wawa Welcome America,” said Teamsters Local 107 president Bill Hamilton, adding that his union was asked to work the event but refused to cross DC 33’s picket line. “If employers think that they can utilize one union and not another, there’s no reason for unions. … It’s a mistake that they crossed the line, and I think it has a lot to do with politics.”
Ryan Boyer, who leads the Laborers District Council and the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, a coalition of about 30 unions, did not respond to numerous requests for comment.
Leaders of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 8 also did not respond to requests for comment.
Bauder said he was proud that many local labor groups backed the strike. But he said the AFL-CIO, which includes the trades and AFSCME, is investigating assertions that union members performed tasks that otherwise would have been done by striking DC 33 members.
“If there’s a need for conversations after everything is settled and the smoke clears, we’ll have them,” he said, adding that the allegations of scabbing are “definitely something I’m worried about.”
One complicating factor is that Parker, who was elected in 2023 with union backing and has a long record of working with organized labor as a legislator, was never an ideal villain for unions in the strike.
“We’re met with this huge challenge of a contract dispute that turns into a strike with the administration — an administration that’s popular and had a lot of labor support in their election and has done some good labor things in office,” Bauder said. “So this is not a Michael Nutter character who was, by the time he left office, pretty universally disliked by the labor community,” he added, referring to the former mayor who clashed with municipal unions for most of his tenure.
Boyer, in particular, was arguably the most important supporter of Parker’s victory in the mayor’s race. During the stoppage, Boyer said he did not believe supporting the mayor he helped elect and the thousands of city workers on strike was a “mutually exclusive” choice.
“We want them to get a fair contract, and we know the mayor will do what’s best,” Boyer said.
He also aggressively criticized DC 33 supporters who attacked Parker personally and who posted her address online to encourage people to drop trash off at her house.
Another union caught in the middle was Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which also played a key role in Parker’s mayoral win.
During the strike, the SEIU Pennsylvania State Council, which includes 32BJ and other unions, issued a statement saying its members “stand with AFSCME DC 33 public sector workers who are on strike for a fair contract, living wages, and retirement security.” But Local 32BJ leaders conspicuously declined to comment during the walkout.
The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which is currently in contract negotiations with the school district, declined to comment “on specific allegations of scabbing during the 33 strike at this time.”
But union president Arthur G. Steinberg said that “scabbing is deplorable, traitorous conduct, and cannot be tolerated by organized labor for one second.”
“At a time when workers’ hard-fought right to organize is under direct fire from the highest office in the country, labor should be standing shoulder to shoulder to withstand any and all attacks on our very existence,” Steinberg said in a statement.
‘Our guys would not cross the line’
The Wawa Welcome America concert on July Fourth became a flashpoint during the strike after headliners LL Cool J and Jazmine Sullivan canceled their performances in solidarity with the striking workers.
The show went on — with some help from unions.
Before the concert, the city’s managing director’s office sent an email, obtained by The Inquirer, to about 80 nonunion city employees asking if any were “willing to do physical labor (ability to lift up to 50 lbs) … to help set up bike racks on the parkway for the 4th of July celebration.”
Another email went out the next morning asking if any of the nonunion workers “had a CDL or a Forklift Certification.”
The city ultimately could not find the needed help within its own ranks and turned to Elliott-Lewis, a private contractor that frequently works with the city.
Elliott-Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.
Hamilton said the Teamsters were asked to work under the Elliott-Lewis contract, driving forklifts during preparations for the concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
“Our guys would not cross the line,” Hamilton said. But workers from the laborers union did, he said.
Although the Teamsters declined to participate, Hamilton said, Boyer arranged for them to be paid anyway.
“He said he would get our dozen people paid,” Hamilton said. “He stuck to his word.”
During the concert, a video technician told The Inquirer he was an IATSE member.
Hamilton said it’s possible the laborers’ and stagehands’ contracts with Elliott-Lewis prevented them from refusing to work the event. But if that was the case, he said, it’s no accident.
“They don’t put the proper language in their contract,” Hamilton said. “We’ve mandated language in our contracts.”
As for Parker, who unabashedly leaned on private contractors during the strike and took a combative approach to DC 33 leadership in public news conferences, Hamilton said the mayor “should be ashamed of her actions and her words during this strike.”
“She doesn’t have any friends on my side of labor, I can tell you that,” he said.
A Parker spokesperson declined to respond to Hamilton’s comments.
During a Wednesday news conference following the end of the strike, Parker acknowledged that moving past the ordeal would require rebuilding relationships.
“You can’t get through something as intense as this and not have to go through healing time,” Parker said, adding that she remains “unapologetically pro-labor, pro-union, pro-worker.”
For Bauder, the primary task in the wake of the strike is the same as it was before: uniting the Philly labor community.
“The mayor did talk a lot about healing and there being time for it,” he said. “I think that there’s an opportunity for all of us to have a little bit of reflection right now.”
Staff writer Jake Blumgart contributed to this article.