Phila. and its largest union reach 1-year deal

The city and its largest union last night agreed to a no-raise, one-year contract that Mayor Nutter said offers an opportunity for management and labor to tackle the long-term costs of health care and pensions.

District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 9,400 mostly blue-collar workers, became the second of four unions to reach a deal with the city, following a July 10 arbitration award to the Fraternal Order of Police. The rank-and-file still must approve the contract.

Remaining are the firefighters, whose arbitration process will stretch out through the end of the year, and AFSCME District Council 47, representing about 3,400 white-collar workers. All four contracts expired June 30.

The District Council 33 contract calls for an $1,100 bonus in lieu of a raise, and leaves unchanged the city's contribution to the union health-care fund.

In what union president Herman "Pete" Matthews called an important first, workers will now be able to bid on jobs that would otherwise be contracted to private entities.

"This contract will help us achieve the long-term goals we have for the city and it won't break the taxpayer's bank," said Nutter, who flew home from vacation in Aruba yesterday afternoon to announce the deal.

"With the cooperation of the FOP and now District Council 33, and I hope the other unions eventually, we will reform our health-care system and make the tough choices and smart investments that will sustain the future of this great city," Nutter said last night during a hastily called news conference.

The agreement came less than a week after the city first made its proposal last Friday.

Union leader Evon Sutton, a perennial rival for Matthews' post, said members of the executive committee did not like the proposal then, and "I don't know what changed between Friday and today."

Matthews praised the mayor for changing the dynamic of negotiations from distrust to cooperation.

"I look forward to working with this man," he said. "He keeps his word, I keep my word, and that's what men and women should do."

The contract does not approach what the police were awarded in salary - a 5 percent hike for most officers by Jan. 1 - but Matthews said the police received salary increases by giving up 10 percent on the city's health-care contributions.

"Our members got shafted," Sutton said. They "deserve, at the very least, what the FOP got."

District Council 47 will "take the mayor at his word that the FOP award should be the 'model' for all city employees," union president Cathy Scott said in a statement.

One of District Council 33's locals, representing corrections officers and youth detention counselors, has won the right to arbitrate a contract for its 2,000 workers and has opted out of the council's agreement.

District Council 33 would join the police and administration in a committee to study ways to cut health-care costs. Nutter wants all four unions to be part of that committee. The union and administration will also form a separate labor-management committee to hash out workplace-improvement issues.

That committee, and the ability to bid on work, is important for Irene Snyder, president of the District Council 33 local representing 600 workers at the airport. Snyder said city workers showed airport managers a better way to install cameras in airport parking lots, and then were forced to teach a private contractor how to do the job. "It's an opportunity that we never had before," said Snyder.

Some of the key provisions in the labor agreement reached last night between the city and District Council 33, the blue-collar union:

The term of the pact will be one year.

Workers will get a $1,100 bonus in lieu of raises.

There will be no change in the city's contribution to the health fund.

The union will be able to bid on all contracts worth more than $1 million.

The tool allowance will be increased by $50 to $350.