Public Employee Press

Black History Month
Protest honors King, blasts Philly mayor

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Two busloads of DC 37 members joined the thousands of firefighters, Teamsters, teachers, and religious and civil rights activists who massed at Philadelphia's historic Independence Park Jan. 19 to celebrate the legacy of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and protest Mayor Michael Nutter's anti-labor policies.

The Saturday morning commemoration started with an invocation from a local pastor and a performance by a gospel choir. In keeping with Dr. King's lifelong commitment to social justice for working people, participants' signs and chants hammered Nutter for refusing to negotiate fair contracts with Philadelphia city employees.

The 11,000 city employees in AFSCME District Council 33, the city's largest public sector union, have been working without raises or a new contract since 2009.

While unions helped the Democratic mayor get elected and save millions of dollars for the city, he has broken his campaign promise of a fair contract and pushed for pension cuts, payless furloughs and worse overtime rules. He is trying legal action to impose contract terms on the union instead of negotiating, and aims to close up to 37 public schools.

Lee Saunders, president of the 1.6-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which includes DC 37, reminded the demonstrators that King was slain while supporting the striking Memphis sanitation workers of AFSCME Local 1733.

"Mayor Nutter calls himself a man of the people, but in reality he's only for the top 1 percent - the wealthy, not the workers," Saunders told the huge throng. "He champions the people with a lot, not the folks with too little."

Saunders said Dr. Martin Luther King "knew that civil rights and workers' rights were connected, but his dream of a just society that protects the rights of working people is under attack in the so-called City of Brotherly Love."

"After helping the city save or generate more than $500 million in the last four years, funding that let the mayor balance four consecutive budgets, the least city workers deserve is fair treatment in arbitrations and contract negotiations," said DC 33 President Pete Matthews.

"Cut, cut, cut! That is what is happening here," said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "All over the United States, we tell our kids to go to college. In Philadelphia, we take away the things that kids need to have access to college."

Philadelphia's District Council 47 represents school workers. President Cathy Scott joined Weingarten and Saunders with messages of solidarity and struggle, and called on the mayor to negotiate in good faith.

Hilda Tennent, a retiree from Local 1549 and a Manhattan resident, came to Philadelphia in one of the DC 37 buses. "I'm glad that I came," she said, holding up her placard. "It's important to show solidarity, not just talk about it. And we're honoring Dr. King today."