Health costs could force city union's hand in stalemate

THE UNION representing Philadelphia's blue-collar workers has been on the job without a contract since 2009. That stalemate might soon cost union members.

For the first time, the city employees of District Council 33 will have to pay $50 per paycheck for health-care benefits beginning in November.

That's because the cost of their health plan is going up, but without a new contract, the amount paid by the city is staying flat.

Will this pressure the union to settle for less?

Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said the city and union are still at loggerheads.

"I don't believe there has been any substantial movement forward in the negotiations," he said. "The mayor continues to work on ways of getting all the parties together."

Union president Pete Matthews declined to comment. But he wrote in a letter to members that their health and welfare fund is "basically bankrupt."

The fund's trustees voted this month to require members to start chipping in, according to the letter.

Matthews also wrote that the union will keep fighting for a contract with increased contributions from the city.

"We intend to - and we will - win," he said.

Sam Katz, chairman of the fiscal watchdog Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, said he won't support the five-year budget plan in 2013 if the city doesn't reach agreements with the union and its white-collar counterpart, District Council 47, which has also been without a contract since 2009.

But Katz said the new health costs probably aren't a game-changer.

"I wouldn't expect [the union] to have a dramatically different posture," he said. "Nor would I expect the administration to have one."