Nutter asks state Supreme Court to intervene in contract dispute

The Nutter administration asked the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to immediately hear its argument for imposing a contract on 6,800 blue-collar municipal workers.

The city filed suit last week in Common Pleas Court seeking to impose terms on AFSCME District Council 33 - including modest raises, potential furloughs, reduced overtime, and a new pension model for future employees - that would end a nearly four-year standoff.

Nutter said in a statement Tuesday that he was petitioning the Supreme Court to take immediate jurisdiction because the "matter is of such pressing public consequence to city employees and taxpayers."

Nutter also said he expected that any lower-court decision would be appealed to the state Supreme Court anyway.

The high court rarely uses its "King's Bench power" to take direct action on a case, but the authority has been used to settle public employee strikes, according to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.

D.C. 33 employees, however, are not on strike, but are working without a contract.

Union president Herman "Pete" Matthews on Tuesday likened Nutter to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who moved to curb public employee bargaining.

"This is horrible," Matthews said. "He's just trying to end the whole collective bargaining system. . . . I cannot believe a Democratic mayor is doing this."

The union's lawyer, Samuel L. Spear, said the city's argument should be made before the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, not a court - let alone the Supreme Court.

He said the city was merely seeking a legal opinion to do what it wanted to do - impose terms rather than bargain.