As the City’s contracts with its largest unions come to close on June 30, a full house of angry union members came to City Council chambers to let Council and Mayor Cherelle Parker know that communication is key.
By Denise Clay-Murray
Because I spend more time in City Council chambers than anyone should, I can easily count the number of times the chambers are full.
If it’s the Mayor’s budget address or Council is tackling a controversial topic, the Caucus room has to serve as an overflow space to accommodate everyone. In fact, the last time that I remember Council chambers being full without the mayor being present was when the Sweetened Beverage Tax was passed and the room was filled with Teamsters.
That changed on Monday when Council’s Committee on Labor and Civil Service held hearings on Mayor Cherelle Parker’s mandate that all City employees return to in-person work by July 15.
And Council chambers were filled with vocal union members who were there to let the administration know that they weren’t going to take Parker’s decision lying down. More than 400 members of AFSCME’s District Council 33 and 47 came out to make sure their voices were heard.
But because Councilmember Jim Harrity, chair of the committee, wanted to make sure that everyone’s voice was heard, he laid down the law regarding comment, telling the audience more than once that he had no problem clearing the chamber if it got too rowdy.
He had to remind people of that twice.
To explain the administration’s position, Camille Duchaussee, the city’s chief administrative officer, told the committee why the administration thought it was time for employees to return to the office.
While hybrid and virtual work hasn’t led to decreased productivity, the administration believes there are more opportunities for collaboration, workforce equity, and mentorship by returning to in-person work, Duchaussee said.
Where union officials are having a problem with this, and why this hearing was held in the first place, is in how the decision was made. Union officials say that things like workplace changes are supposed to be negotiated between the administration and the union.
Duchaussee said this wasn’t the case.
“The decision to establish work locations as in an office requirement is an employer’s prerogative and not a mandatory subject of bargaining,” she said. “While we value input from employees and welcome constructive dialogue on work-related matters, certain decisions are made in the best interest of the city and based on administration’s discretions vision and philosophy. Work location is one such decision that falls within the purview of management authority.”
For some of the Council members, the timing of the news was a concern. For parents that had spent months using a hybrid — meaning time in and out of the office — or a totally virtual schedule and planned care of children and elders around it, finding caregivers on short notice is going to be a challenge, said Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Especially since most summer programs for both children and adults begin taking applications shortly after the first of the year.
“July 15 is very difficult for individuals who must now look for childcare in the middle of the summer,” she said. “It is very difficult to find quality childcare. Now, this is just me, but if Katherine had to make this decision, Katherine would have gone to the unions and had a conversation with him first. Katherine would have waited until September.”
Currently, the City has a staffing problem. The city workforce is 20% smaller than it needs to be, something that many of the people testifying on behalf of the unions alluded to.
Mandating in-person work is going to make Philadelphia less competitive, and some of our suburban neighbors are already primed to take advantage, said April Giggets, president of District Council 47.
“We have to have a real conversation about how we retain the best and the brightest, and how we recruit the best and the brightest,” she said. “Remote work is the new normal. When Mayor Parker announced this, Montgomery County posted ‘Come work for us!’ They are offering remote with more pay, and you don’t have to live in the city. We are competing with not just the private sector, but the with the public sector, and we have to be forward thinkers. We have to be trendsetters.”
Now there’s not a lot that Council can actually do about this. Parker is the mayor. This is an administrative decision. Although there’s a perception among some that she doesn’t always see Council as a co-equal branch of government, it is. And just like she can’t tell them how to manage their affairs, they can’t tell her how to manage the overall running of her part of the government.
But while Council can’t change the Mayor’s mind or mandate that she allow people to continue working in a hybrid or remote way, the move could cause some complications because of an upcoming deadline. On June 30, the current contract between the city and its two biggest unions expires.
While Duchaussee says that work location isn’t something the administration would negotiate, chances are that it’s going to come up. Especially since you have two groups of unions that she admits didn’t know when the mandatory in-office work requirement was going to kick in until it was announced in a press conference and have members who specifically got hired to work with a remote or hybrid schedule.
For the sake of Philadelphians who need the services provided by these workers, let’s hope that things work out, because if it doesn’t, a government that you can “see, touch and feel” will invite folks to touch their picket signs.
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