The Last Union Town

But none of that addresses the large economic imbalance confronting Philadelphia. None of it salves the fierce antagonism between workers and management in the city. None of it makes Philadelphia a more attractive place to do business. And maybe most critically, none of it reduces the outsized cost of construction in city limits, so the average citizen can afford a home built here. Time will reveal whether the new mayor and City Council serve the citizenry as well as they serve the interests of powerful lobbies, in secret meetings.

Of course, the free market may be at work, invisibly. While unions may have stared down City Council on this particular issue — minority hiring — Councilman DiCicco says their influence is crumbling: “They don’t have the power they once did. Growing up, I remember a day when Philadelphia was the textile capital of the world. The unions had real sway then. My relatives all worked in the tailor shops: Botany 500, After Six, Wanamaker shirts. And every Election Day, they would go work the polls. But things have changed.”

Walter Licht, the historian at Penn, says that society will change, power will fade and flare, political kings will rise and fall. But union people — carpenters and metal benders and roofers and train conductors and clerical workers — put their faith in the unassailable fastness of numbers.

“Has membership declined? I don’t think so,” Licht says. “Is the number of non-union jobs going up? No.”

And so this remains: Organized labor may face powerful forces — a changing economy, shifting public attitudes, neighborhoods in transition, a mayor who owes nothing. But Philadelphia unions existed before each of those things, and will almost certainly outlast them all.