Lessons from the DC 33 Strike in Philadelphia

Heading into the July 4th weekend, Philadelphia’s DC 33, the ASCFME union affiliate responsible for everything from picking up the trash to handling 911 calls, dramatically announced its intention to strike without a settled contract. 

It was a big move at an inopportune time for Cherelle Parker’s mayoral administration. 

DC 33 is the largest and lowest-paid of all of Philadelphia's municipal unions. 

They're well-liked city employees who do some of the hardest, most thankless work in the city. Everyone with kids appreciates a honk or a wave from the sanitation workers, and many of the behind-the-scenes members make the city run. 

And residents, who were getting ready for July 4th celebrations, were all preemptively holding their noses at the thought of trash piling up in their yards, allies, sidewalks, and homes. 

From the beginning of the strike, public sentiment was squarely on the side of the union, especially on social media, with sentiment monitoring for both social media and traditional media showing a disproportionate negativity aimed at Parker. 

The strike quickly turned personal, with the salaries of the mayor and her top staff circulating across Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

At the same time, union officials and staff used its social media channels to build support. Their posts and content generated strong reach and engagement, with third-party content from supportive posters really breaking through.  

But even as a groundswell of support grew for the union and its members, a tactic and logistics oversight put the union at a significant disadvantage. 

Members on strike do not get paid.

When calling a strike, unions rely on a strike fund to ensure their members have money to pay bills. 

Strike funds are usually built from dues. Union leadership must diligently build stockpiles to ensure they are ready to support their members when it's time to strike. With a small fund, it can be difficult to rally member support for a strike. 

Sometimes unions can grow its strike fund from creative or unusual sources. For example, the Major League Baseball Player's Union built a significant strike fund by dedicating a portion of licensing fees to a fund from things like baseball cards. The large strike fund gave baseball players leverage in 1990s when they struck. 

For DC 33, the strike fund was set to provide workers $200 a week, not enough to help members make ends meet. 

Every campaign and every advocacy push has a call to action associated with it. And for many, that's a donation. 

We've all been inundated with emails and text messages asking for money. (Today's the deadline! Donate now! We'll match your donation! If you don't donate, the world will end!) 

They're annoying, but the reality is advocacy efforts and campaigns need money to communicate, they need money to organize, and they need money to support their work. 

In DC 33's case, their members needed money to support themselves while they struck for better wages and working conditions. 

With public sentiment on their side, especially on social media, it took the union until July 6th to put up content acknowledging that the public was asking how they could help, including making monetary donations, saying, "We are in the process of setting up a website for monetary donations to support our existing strike fund, which will be available in the coming days."  

It wasn't until July 7th that the union posted a QR code with a way for supporters to donate to the strike fund. 

A donation page and a call to action should have gone live before the strike began. 

By failing to provide the public with a means to channel their support and supplement the critical strike fund, the union made it more difficult for itself to sustain the strike. 

At points when public engagement was the highest, there was no way to channel overwhelming public support into dollars for union members. 

It isn't easy to assess how much it matters, and we'll get some data points this week when members vote to ratify the new contract. 

The union's lead attorney pointed to laws that make it difficult to carry out extended strikes due to the necessity of the work the union's members perform. It was speculated that the Parker administration was ready to seek a court order to send sanitation workers back to work on public health grounds. That's what happened during the last extended strike in 1986. Already, 911 operators and some other critical workers were forced back because of court orders. 

Workers strike for better conditions, stability, and quality of life, but ultimately work – and strikes – are about pay and money. 

The union seemingly failed to capitalize on public support for their members by not having the plan to turn engagement into dollars, and it made their negotiations and campaign more difficult.