The Last Union Town

Furthermore, while Nutter may not look too kindly on the unions that didn’t support him — and while he may have overreached with “apartheid” — the odds are against his attacking the unions without some introspection. Those four municipal contracts — with police, firefighters, and blue-collar and white-collar worker unions — will all be up for negotiation by June. Nutter has big ideas that depend on a cooperative city workforce, from fighting violent crime to wiping out governmental corruption. He also has to tell that workforce that Philadelphia’s cupboard is bare. Katz says with a chuckle that it’s a challenge so daunting, “It makes me think, gosh, I’m glad I didn’t win.”

So Nutter’s path was clear: Push the unions, but not too far. Push for racial balance, but not necessarily for competition in the marketplace. It was the only viable political path.


BACK IN COUNCIL chambers, as Council members chewed through an agenda of dull legislative housekeeping, the crowd dwindled throughout the day. Four hundred became 300, then 200, then 100. The clock overhead showed noon, one, two, three. But there, as still and immobile as the lone rock in a time-lapse photo, sat Frank Keel.

Council took a recess. The crowd thinned from 100 to 50, then 10. Then four. And there sat Frank the Tank, carved from granite and threatening to collapse his wooden chair. As hours passed, he seemed to grow more Irish; color flooded his cheeks, and he wavered once, momentarily, about 8 p.m.: “Now they’re into cocktail hour,” he said. “Jaysus.”

Throughout the recess, various Council members met in Council president Anna Verna’s office, possibly in violation of the state’s Sunshine Law, which dictates that public representatives should meet openly, where they’re accountable to the public they serve. Councilman DiCicco dismisses this: “It was just conversations.”

At 10 p.m., Council reentered the chamber and voted on a bill regarding the Convention Center: Somehow, as if by miracle, the question of non-union work had disappeared from it during the recess, replaced by a demand that the unions come up with figures proving they’ve hired 40 percent minority workers; currently, apart from the laborers, unions are 80 percent white. There would be no non-union workers at the Convention Center. No chain-link fence and no color-coded smoke bombs.

Frank Keel lifted himself from his seat, strode out into the corridors of power, and placed a quiet phone call. Later, Pat Gillespie said, “I see no problem for us, here. I’m thinking right now of one union whose apprenticeship classes have been 100 percent African-American for the past five years.”

Could he share which union that is?

“I’m duty-bound to not reveal that, just now.”

In the end — of this scuffle, at least — it appears that everybody won. The incoming mayor and City Council all scored political points by twisting the unions’ well-muscled arms for the unassailably good cause of racial fairness. Black labor workers won because they will now — if the unions follow through — find more work. And the unions won because they managed to stamp out the possibility of non-union work on their turf.

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