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On July 1, more than 9,000 members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)s District Council 33 in Philadelphia went on strike. The work stoppage entered its second week with no end in sight, but a marathon bargaining session resulted in a 4 a.m. tentative agreement between the unions leaders and the city government on Wednesday, July 9. While Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has tried to spin it as a win for the workers (and has embraced it as a victory for her administration), some union members public reaction to the deal has been far from positive. On Monday, July 14, theyll vote on whether to ratify the new contract, and the outcome is currently anyone’s guess. The unionknown better as DC 33represents the citys blue-collar municipal workers, who handle a wide range of job descriptionsfrom 911 dispatchers to library assistants to water department employees. Perhaps most notably, it also represents thousands of sanitation workers, and its that group in particular that became the most visible symbol of the strike due to the nature of their workand the visceral ramifications of their work stoppage. As the sixth-largest city in the U.S., Philadelphia generates a lot of trash. And with the trash collectors on strike, things quickly got ugly. Enormous piles of trash popped up all over the city once the workers walked out, spilling out of the citys designated temporary drop-off centers and onto the citys streets and sidewalks. In an unflattering homage to Mayor Parker, who became the face of the citys fitful negotiations with the union, some residents dubbed the garbage heaps Parker piles. Thanks to soaring temperatures, spiking humidity, and heavy rain, residents complained that the stench was becoming a serious problem before the agreement was reached. So how did the city get here? DC 33s most recent contract expired at midnight on July 1, following a one-year extension that the union agreed to at the beginning of Parkers term in 2024. While the mayors office indicated a willingness to continue bargaining, the unions leadership decided to call a strike, determined to secure a meaningful economic boost for their members. This marks the first time DC 33 has hit the bricks since 1986, when workers stayed off the job for three weeks, and 45,000 tons of garbage towered over the streets. The primary issue is money: Members of DC 33 are the lowest paid of the citys four municipal unions, as well as the only one with a predominantly Black membership; the other three include AFSCME DC 47, which is made up of white-collar city workers, and the unions representing the city’s police officers and firefighters. The average salary among DC 33 members is only $46,000 a year, which workers have decried as poverty wages. (Sanitation workers, by the way, generally take home about $42,000 a year, and Philadelphias sanitation workers are among the lowest-paid employees in the country despite serving a city of more than 1.5 million residents.) Those numbers place them well below a living wage for Philadelphia, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated as $48,387 for a single adult with no children. The union was most recently asking for a 5% yearly wage increase over a three-year contract, but the city refused to budge from its own proposal of 2.75%, 3%, and 3% increases over that same periodonly inching up to a 3% first-year raise in the tentative agreement. The city of Philadelphia currently has a budget surplus of $882 million, from which the mayor budgeted $550 million to cover all four municipal union contracts. The cost of the proposed DC 33 contract will be $115 million over its three years. In contrast, Parkers current budget proposal has already bookmarked $872 million for the Philadelphia Police Department, a $20 million increase that includes $1.3 million for new uniforms. City officials touted their lowball offer to DC 33 as a sign of fiscal responsibility, but even now that bargaining has ended, union negotiators and their membership remain adamant that its just not enough. There were other issues at play, too. Unlike other city employees like police and firefighters, DC 33 members are required to live inside the city of Philadelphiawhich, given the rising cost of living, only adds to the economic pressures they face. The union sought to remove the residency requirement in order to give their members more flexibility, but the city ultimately shot down their request. In addition, the union fought to preserve and improve members healthcare and pension plans, and saw some success. With an embattled mayor facing criticism over her own staffs lavish salaries and mixed results on her campaign promise to make the city “safer, cleaner, greener, the city took an increasingly combative posture toward the union. Multiple injunctions forced certain strikers (like those at the airport, the medical examiner’s office, the water department, and the 911 dispatch center) back to work, while the city paid private contractors to clear the trash drop-off sites and called in non-union workers to perform union labor. Meanwhile, DC 33 maintained picket lines outside libraries, sanitation centers, and city buildings during a week of sweltering heat. Workers danced, sang, marched, set up impromptu cookouts, and waved signs at passersby. The Wawa Welcome America concert on the Fourth of July lost both of its headliners, LL Cool J and Jazmine Sullivan, who both canceled their performances in solidarity with the strikers. Thre was also tragedy: Two striking DC 33 workers, one of whom is pregnant, were the victims of a hit-and-run accident last week when an intoxicated individual drove into their picket line; Tyree Ford, a sanitation worker and father of four, sustained serious injuries and is still in critical condition. Ultimately, the citys strong-arm approach led to the current tentative agreement, which falls far short of what the workers wanted and is not guaranteed to survive the membership vote. Union leadership has been open about its own disappointment, too. The strike is over, and nobodys happy, Greg Boulware, president of DC 33, told The Philadelphia Inquirer as he left the marathon bargaining session. We felt our clock was running out.
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E-Commerce
A federal judge blocked Trumps Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship Thursday. By allowing the case to proceed as a class action lawsuit, the block gets around a 6-3 Supreme Court decision last month that limited judges abilities to issue nationwide injunctions on Trump administration policies. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, seeks to protect the class of babies born to temporary residents or unlawful permanent residents since Feb. 20. These children wouldunlike generations of children born in similar situationsbe deprived of citizenship under Trumps order, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, which reinterprets the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment specifically enshrined this principle in our Constitutions text to ensure that no onenot even the Presidentcould deny children born in America their rightful place as citizens, according to the complaint filed late last month. Joseph N. Laplante, a U.S. District Court Judge based in New Hampshire wrote in his ruling that members of the class impacted by the end of birthright citizenship are likely to suffer irreparable harm if the executive order is not blocked. By allowing the lawsuit to continue as a class actiona type of civil lawsuit filed on behalf of a large group of similarly-situated people who have been similarly harmedLaplantes ruling uses the only remaining workaround to stop policies deemed unlawful from being implemented nationwide. Before the Supreme Court ruled against the practice last month, judges were able to issue universal, or nationwide injunctions against such policies. The Trump administration has 7 days to appeal Laplantes ruling, and White House officials say they are planning to fight back against the injunction, accusing the judge of “abusing class action certification procedures.” Todays decision is an obvious and unlawful attempt to circumvent the Supreme Courts clear order against universal relief,” Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary and special assistant to President Trump, tells Fast Company. “The Trump Administration will be fighting vigorously against the attempts of these rogue district court judges to impede the policies President Trump was elected to implement. For immigration rights activists, however, the ruling is a major triumph for the children who would be born stateless if not for birthright citizenshipan estimated 255,000 annually, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This ruling is a huge victory and will help protect the citizenship of all children born in the United States, as the Constitution intended, Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLUs Immigrants Rights Project, said in a statement. We are fighting to ensure President Trump doesnt trample on the citizenship rights of one single child.
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E-Commerce
TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy investigation into user data sent to China, regulators said Thursday. The Data Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow-up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro ($620 million) fine after it found the video-sharing app put users at risk of spying by allowing remote access to their data from China. The Irish national watchdog serves as TikToks lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the companys European headquarters is based in Dublin. During an earlier investigation, TikTok initially told the regulator it didnt store European user data in China, and that data was only accessed remotely by staff in China. However, it later backtracked and said that some data had in fact been stored on Chinese servers. The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action. As a result of that consideration, the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok, the watchdog said. The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue, including the lawfulness of the transfers, the regulator said, referring to the European Unions strict privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation. TikTok, which is owned by Chinas ByteDance, has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal user information amid concerns from Western officials that it poses a security risk. TikTok noted that it was the one that notified the Data Protection Commission, after it embarked on a data localization project called Project Clover that involved building three data centers in Europe to ease security concerns. Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover,” the company said in a statement. “We promptly deleted this minimal amount of data from the servers and informed the DPC. Our proactive report to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and data security. Under GDPR, European user data can only be transferred outside of the bloc if there are safeguards in place to ensure the same level of protection. Only 15 countries or territories are deemed to have the same data privacy standard as the EU, but China is not one of them. By Kelvin Chan, AP business writer
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