“They Are My People…”

In an interview, Mayor Cherelle Parker justified her approach to contract negotiations with District Council 33 against outsiders by saying the trash haulers, library workers, 911 dispatchers, and morgue attendants were “her people.” I wonder if they feel the same.

By the time you read this, the people who are scheduled to have their trash picked up on Monday mornings will have breathed a sigh of relief after seeing empty trash containers near their homes now that city workers represented by District Council 33 are back on the job.

Unless you’ve been out of town or have a medical condition that keeps you from having to deal with the smell of concentrated trash near a city park, you know that DC33 went on strike for eight days. After some tense negotiating between DC33 and Mayor Cherelle Parker, a tentative three-year deal was reached and is currently being voted on by the union.

For a little context here, DC33 has the distinction of representing a group of people who not only have some of the most demanding jobs in the city — trash collectors, 911 dispatchers, the morgue attendants that pick up those killed in the city’s never ending battle with gun violence — but are paid the least of any group of city employees.

In other words, if you see your librarian whip out an EBT card, now you know why.

I’ve been covering labor unrest for most of my career, and the one insight that’s always stuck with me is that the best way you can tell whether or not the contract reached was fair is by neither side being very happy about it.

While Greg Boulware, DC33 president, let people know from the rip that he was quite unhappy with the deal, Parker has been doing a victory lap. You can do that when you somehow convince the public that adding what the union got on an expired contract means you’ve made history.

As part of this victory lap, Parker spoke to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

(What? Did you think she’d speak to Hall Monitor?)

She talked about playing hardball with the union and how the mostly progressive political officials, including several members of Philadelphia City Council, that opposed the relatively low raises — 3% a year for the next three years — and Parker’s use of the City’s Law Department to force people back to work of wanting to see a fight instead of unity.

DC33 understood that she did what she had to do because, and I quote, “They are my people…”

As the members of a union so poorly paid that many of its members qualify for public assistance prepare a ratification vote on a contract that does absolutely nothing to change that, I have to wonder, as I’m sure they are, what it means to be “your people,” Madame Mayor.

Now, before I go any further, and because Mayor Parker is laboring under the belief that anyone who thinks the union got a raw deal here is speaking from a position of privilege, I’m going to share a little more of my life story with you. 

I was the fifth of five kids born to a non-commissioned military officer and his wife, who worked for the State of New Jersey. My parents were the children of tobacco farmers, housekeepers, and laborers. While both of themwent to college, neither finished.

Where I grew up, Pemberton, New Jersey, was a combination of military and working-class families. Some of my classmates had parents who didn’t come home from Vietnam. Heck, my Dad spent most of my elementary and middle school years on the 38^th parallel between North and South Korea. No one was paid much. I knew military folks who worked at grocery stores part-time to make ends meet. 

So, what I’m about to say next is not coming from a scion of privilege. Far from it. The only time I come into contact with privilege these days is when I hang out with my friends in finance or when I come to City Hall.

Here goes.

Madame Mayor, “your people” deserved better than this. Much better. And I can’t help but think that this deal shows that you, like many of the sons and daughters of trash haulers and laborers that occupy City Hall, might have forgotten where you came from.

I say this because when you take into consideration that over the last two years you and your cabinet have marched into City Council chambers and gotten the body to take out a total of $900 million in bonds for programs so half-baked that the folks sent to defend them can’t answer any of the questions Council has for them, lowballing people like the folks who work for DC33 takes a level of unmitigated gall I didn’t know you had…especially in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” 

When you add to this your willingness to spend money you could have given the union on contractors to pick up trash and the fact that solicitor Renee Garcia was the only person busier during the strike than Deputy Mayor Sincere Harris — or did you think that the union didn’t realize that you were about to pull a Wilson Goode 1986 on them — I, again, ask what it means to be “your people”.

While District Council 47 has agreed to a tentative agreement, there are still more city contracts outstanding. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is probably next. I wonder what those contracts will look like. Or maybe I already know.

Mayor Parker, you often quote the great James Baldwin, saying, “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” 

Please realize that this goes double for you. 

If you don’t want the “ones” that you ask people to put in the air to illustrate a united city to be something other than the index finger, you might want to remember that.