On July 1, the 9,000 Philadelphia public-sector workers of AFSCME District Council 33 went on strike, demanding a 5% annual wage increase over three years. One worker summed up the strike’s aims, telling The Communist: “We work for the city of Philly, we should be able to afford living in the city of Philly.”
After eight days on strike, DC33’s leadership caved to Philadelphia’s mayor, Democrat Cherelle Parker. Workers got only a 3% annual raise, which risks falling below inflation and becoming a pay cut. Speaking to the mainstream media, DC33 President Greg Boulware said, “The strike is over, and nobody’s happy.”
Rank-and-file militancy
The strike effectively shut down a range of city services, including trash pickup, legal filings, dead body collection, and more. Rank-and-file AFSCME workers set a bold example, displaying the real potential of the organized working class. Inspiring footage of militant pickets driving scabs out of a sanitation facility went viral on the strike’s first day. Similar incidents unfolded around the city.
The rank-and-file came prepared to fight. But the DC33 leadership was completely unprepared to wage a serious struggle, build mass working-class solidarity in action, and expand the strike. This would have been the only way to sweep aside the scabs and defeat the capitalist state’s repression. Instead, AFSCME leaders were outmaneuvered by Parker and the class enemy’s courts at every turn.
RCA comrades visited the picket lines to deliver food and water, show our solidarity, and talk to workers about their struggle. “They [the bosses’ government] spit in our faces,” one worker told The Communist. “They hired [scab] contractors to do the work at $30 an hour with guaranteed overtime. $30 an hour, when our highest-paid guys make $22! So we locked up the gates, and told [city officials] if they wanted them open, they need to pay us our money. Until then, [the gates] stay shut.”
On the strike’s second day, Philadelphia Solicitor General Renee Garcia held a revealing press conference to justify the city’s legal repression against the strike. She described militant picket lines blocking scabs from entering the Water Department, shuttering libraries and recreation centers, and closing down sanitation centers—as well as alleged acts of sabotage. “This is not legal activity. This is in violation of injunctions,” she said of the workers’ heroic resistance against Parker’s scheme to impose poverty wages.
Lions led by donkeys
The union had enormous public support, despite mountains of garbage—dubbed “Parker piles” by locals—building up on city streets. Thousands attended marches and picket lines in solidarity with the union. There was widespread rejection of the mayor’s appeals to citizens to deliver their own trash to pre-arranged “dump sites.” Instead of mobilizing this mighty reserve of working class solidarity, DC33 leaders quickly ceded the initiative to the capitalist state.
The city’s administration was well prepared to beat the strike. Parker deployed 100 managers to serve as scabs at the Water Department—for astronomical wages of $2,000 a day in some cases. She also leaned on non-union trainees and expensive private contractors as scabs, keeping sanitation services running at a minimal level.
Court injunctions peeled layer after layer of union members away from the picket lines, forcing 911 dispatchers, medical examiners, and airport staff back to work. These court orders reveal the real nature of the “right to strike” under American capitalism: strikes may be tolerated, but only if the capitalist courts are allowed to mutilate them.
DC33’s leaders bowed to these injunctions with indecent haste, issuing a directive:
Compliance is not only a legal obligation but also essential to ensure the safety and integrity of our collective actions. By following these injunctions, we uphold the principles of lawful protest and demonstrate our commitment to responsible activism.
This is complete nonsense! Back-to-work injunctions are violations of workers’ basic right to strike. To win, strikers must challenge these rulings. Instead of telling DC33 members to respect the bosses’ courts, AFSCME leaders should have immediately appealed to the rest of the labor movement—and unorganized workers, too—for support. They could have escalated and expanded the strike by explaining that a fundamental right of all workers was under attack and that a victory for DC 33 would strengthen workers throughout the city, state, and nation.
Thanks to the policies of the DC 33 leadership, the same workers who had defeated scabs and defied police in the strike’s opening days, now felt powerless. One worker told The Communist, “What can we do? The city is writing the rules as they go. For every step we take, they push us three steps back.” This is how the supposedly “pro-union” Democratic Party deals with workers exercising their basic democratic rights!
Missed opportunity
Like governments around the world, Philadelphia is deeply indebted. The city runs an annual deficit of more than $80 million and is burdened with $9.8 billion in debt. To solve its gargantuan debt crisis, the ruling class is turning to vicious austerity cuts, attacks on public sector workers, and assaults on unions and the right to strike.
Parker aims to force the city’s workers to pay for the government’s financial problems, and DC33 workers aren’t the only ones in the firing line. Workers from AFSCME DC47 were preparing to strike as early as July 16. Members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who face huge cuts and school closures, voted 94% in favor of strike action ahead of their contract’s August 31 expiration date.
Meanwhile, Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 faces mass layoffs due to a budget crisis at SEPTA, the region’s public transit system. The prospect of thousands of lost jobs is an immediate crisis for the TWU, which has every reason to break their contract’s no-strike clause.
These four unions, representing some 34,000 workers, could have launched a coordinated strike to force the capitalists to pay for the budget crisis. The city would have ground to a halt with no public transportation; classes canceled for more than 200,000 students; and no sanitation, water, libraries, or clerical services—hitting the class enemy where it hurts by cutting off the flow of profits. Mass pickets and demonstrations could have defended such a strike, and its militancy would have served as a clear beacon to the rest of the working class—in Philly and beyond.
To win, workers need a militant leadership ready to take the struggle all the way. But history wastes nothing. The DC33 strike revealed enormous anger and tenacity of the working class, as well as an enthusiastic spirit of solidarity that rippled across the city. With even greater struggles on the horizon, the advanced guard of the working class will learn important lessons. This battle may have been lost, but the class war is far from over!