❌ Still no deal between Parker and striking union

🏖️ Best Shore Towns To Visit This Summer

Independence Day Weekend may be over, but your brain might still be in vacation mode. If you’re gearing up for your next getaway, here are towns that journalist Jen Miller recommends visiting at the Jersey Shore, plus some tips to make the most out of your stay. [🎧 City Cast Philly]

🪧 Trash Piles Up and Tensions Rise As Municipal Workers Strike Enters Eighth Day

City services are still disrupted as District Council 33’s strike rolls into its second week, with no signs of ending.

• Although LL Cool J and Jazmine Sullivan dropped out of last Friday’s Independence Day concert in support of striking workers, that added pressure did not lead to a deal. [🔒 Rolling Stone]
• Mayor Parker said that she did not care if her decision-making “means I’m a one-term mayor” as she refused to agree to the union’s demand for 5% annual raises. [🔒 The Inquirer]
• DC33 is seen as unlikely to budge either after concessions made in a 1992 contract under Mayor Ed Rendell’s administration have left mounting resentment. [🔒 The Inquirer]
• The city released an updated list of temporary garbage drop-off sites but trash has still been overflowing in Philly neighborhoods, with some Reddit users dubbing the mounds “Parker Piles.” [Office of Clean & Green Initiatives, Reddit]
• Firefighters have already put out two separate fires at said sites. And a drunk driver allegedly struck two sanitation workers on the picket line in Port Richmond. [6ABC]
• Striking workers at the Medical Examiner's Office were ordered back to work following an injunction, just like some 9-1-1 operators and Water Department employees were last week. [CBS Philly]
• Meanwhile another union representing municipal workers, District Council 47, is voting on a strike authorization this week, with administrative assistants and white-collar professionals eligible to strike. [🔒 The Inquirer]

🤍 Philly Enters July With Two Mass Shootings

The month is off to a tragic start after two separate mass shootings occurred in the first week. Eight people were injured and are in stable condition after a shooting Saturday at a South Philadelphia lounge, which has since had its business license revoked. In a separate incident, three people were killed and ten others injured in a shooting in Grays Ferry yesterday morning. [NBC10]

This week 122 years ago, over 100,000 workers, including children, marched against working conditions in the mills behind legendary labor organizer Mother Jones. Laborers kicked off the three-week strike in Kensington but the movement later spread across the East Coast in a push for a 55-hour work week and an end to night work for women and children.

Over a century later, labor’s fight continues. City services from sanitation to public libraries have been disrupted this month as Philly’s largest blue-collar workers union strikes for the first time in 40 years, demanding higher wages and better health benefits.

Philadelphia has a long history of fights for labor rights. Here are other significant strikes in the city’s history.

1835 General Strike

The first general strike in the United States occurred in Philadelphia. In May 1835, inspired by the Boston Carpenter’s Strike of 1835, coal heavers on the docks of the Schuylkill River went on strike for a ten-hour work day. This occurred at a time where work schedules were still abiding by an agricultural schedule of work from sunrise to sunset, resulting in longer summer hours. As the strike went on, other laborers such as cordwainers (shoemakers) and carpenters signed on, and by June, over 40 trades and 20,000 workers had joined the strike. At the end of the month, employees won a ten-hour workday and were allowed to leave work before sundown.