Philly’s striking workers don’t earn a living wage, according to MIT
Members of DC 33 earn an average annual salary of $46,000, a pay rate more than $2,000 below Philadelphia’s “living wage.”
Stacy Needle-Singleton has worked for the Philadelphia Water Department for 19 years. During that time, she says, salaries have not kept pace with Philadelphia’s rising cost of living.
“When I started, we were blue-collar workers,” she said. “We are no longer blue-collar workers, we are poverty level.”
Wages are at the center of AFSCME District Council 33’s ongoing strike. The union’s members — approximately 9,000 city employees, including 911 dispatchers and sanitation and water treatment workers — earn an average annual salary of $46,000, a pay rate more than $2,000 below Philadelphia’s “living wage,” according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator.
The Living Wage Calculator estimates the cost of living in a community based on typical expenses including housing, transportation, food, and childcare.
The average DC 33 salary does not cover these estimated costs for a single adult with no children. For a household with two adults and two children, the combined cost of food and childcare alone exceeds the average DC 33 worker’s salary.
Needle-Singleton says she is “always living paycheck to paycheck” and struggles to afford rent, food, and medication for herself and her 15-year-old child.
“A lot of us can’t breathe right now. I’m on the verge of being evicted, with two kids,” she said. “So if I don’t get something soon, I’m gonna end up on the streets.”
Saida Byrd, a 311 employee picketing at City Hall on Tuesday, told The Inquirer that, even with a second job, she lives “overdraft to overdraft.”
Some DC 33 workers are eligible for public assistance programs, depending on their household size. But many, Needle-Singleton says, are just above the threshold to qualify.
“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, all of us,” she said. “We can’t afford to leave Philadelphia, and we can’t afford to stay.”
The Parker administration’s latest offer as of Thursday evening would give workers annual raises of 2.75%, 3%, and 3% over the course of three years. It would also add a fifth level to the DC 33 pay scale for longtime employees and provide one-time bonuses amounting to 2% of each worker’s salary.
The deal would bump the average DC 33 salary up to $50,140 after three years — just above MIT’s estimated living wage for a single worker with no children.
Meanwhile, DC 33 president Greg Boulware is demanding yearly wage increases of 5%, which would bring the average annual salary to $53,250.
The average pay for DC 33 workers also lags behind the typical salaries paid to many other occupations in Pennsylvania. And, among Philadelphia’s four major municipal unions, DC 33 is the lowest-paid.
Needle-Singleton thinks this is a sign that DC 33’s workers are undervalued by the city.
“This is not just about salaries. It’s also about dignity, it’s about respect, it’s about valuing our job. The city doesn’t run without us,” she said.