If nobody stopped me, I could talk about urban sanitation for hours on end. Unfortunately, somebody (normally my wife) always stops me – usually in the first minute or two. It seems few people share my pathological fixation with littering and ways to optimise waste management.
Until recently, that is. Now every single resident of Philadelphia, my home town, is talking trash. Almost 10,000 city workers, members of the city’s largest blue-collar union, went on strike for eight days, affecting everything from libraries to public swimming pools. But the most visible signs of the strike were the huge piles of trash that accumulated (nicknamed “Parker Piles” after mayor Cherelle Parker) because there was no garbage pickup. Did I mention it has been boiling hot? You can imagine the situation. The rats are in heaven; I am in hell.
Early on Wednesday, a deal was finally done. The trash is still there, however. While I have been a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, it seems the stinky trash piles did exactly what they were meant to do: remind everyone that the people who keep society running are underpaid and overworked. The world had a brief moment of appreciation for essential workers during the pandemic, but, after everyone finished their nightly clapping, nothing changed, did it? The rich just got richer.
The strike started because the mayor said there wasn’t enough money in the city’s budget to give the union what it wanted, which was better benefits and a 5% wage increase a year for three years. (The union has accepted a three-year deal that will represent a 14% pay increase for members over the four years of Parker’s term; the agreement is still to be ratified.)
Sanitation workers in Philadelphia make $39,000 to $42,000 (£29,000 to £31,000) a year. I am obviously no expert in the city’s budget, but it’s funny what there was money for before the strike. There was a cool $877m (£645m) for the Philadelphia police department. Which, by the way, is spending $1.3m on a new uniform that is a slightly darker shade of blue. There was enough money to pay Parker the same sort of salary (about $270,000) as the mayor of the significantly larger New York City. There was enough money, according to analysis by the Philadelphia Inquirer last year, for 16 of Parker’s closest cabinet members to collectively earn $3.5m – $1m more than their peers earned under the previous mayor.
“Don’t tell me what you value,” Joe Biden used to say. “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.” Now that a deal has been done, I hope Philadelphia starts valuing clean streets – because the current situation stinks.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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• This article was amended on 9 July 2025 to include details of the pay deal agreed between the mayor of Philadelphia and the public sector workers’ union on the morning of 9 July.
