Strikers Accept Detroit’s New Contract Offer

A 19-day strike by city workers that had crippled bus service and garbage collection in the nation’s sixth-largest city ended Sunday after striking city employees ratified a new three-year labor agreement, union officials said Sunday night.

Union leaders said virtually all of the 7,000 strikers should be back on the job today, after rank-and-file members of Council 25 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees voted Sunday in favor of the new contract by 1,298 to 956.

Union leaders said Sunday that the new contract provides larger wage hikes for city employees than were included in an earlier tentative pact that was overwhelmingly rejected by union members in a ratification vote earlier in the strike.

The new accord was hammered out by bargainers for the city and the union early Sunday morning after four days of secret talks. The contract calls for a 5% wage hike and $500 cash bonus in the first year, a 3% hike and $200 bonus in the second and a $400 bonus, but no base wage hike, in the third. James Glass, the council’s president, said in an interview that the new accord was “much better than the first one we agreed to.”

That earlier pact was rejected by a 3-1 vote of the union’s membership, primarily because of its low wage hikes and a clause that would have allowed the city to cut wages in the final year of the contract. Glass said that the union agreed to the new contract because it guarantees larger raises, while eliminating the possibility of a wage take-back in the third year.

The union had initially sought a 40% wage hike over three years but had lowered its demand to 26% by the time the strike began. Just before its employees walked off their jobs, the city was offering a raise of only 2% in the first year, with wage increases in later years tied to the city’s fiscal health.

No Comment From Mayor

City officials, including Mayor Coleman A. Young, could not be reached for comment Sunday afternoon.

The strike, Detroit’s first since 1980, had shut down the inner-city bus system, stranding its 200,000 riders. And with a statewide primary election scheduled for Tuesday, the strike had also forced Detroit’s Election Department to scramble for temporary workers to fill in for strikers to process absentee ballots and set up polling places.

But Detroit’s biggest strike-related headache had been that most garbage throughout the city had gone uncollected, because members of the Teamsters Union, which represents the city’s sanitation workers, were honoring the AFSCME picket lines. At least 4,000 tons of uncollected garbage had been piling up each day since the walkout began July 16.

During the strike, the city was able to collect garbage at night in the downtown area and in nearby business and restaurant districts that attract visitors, and also set up six central dump sites to collect garbage from throughout the city. As a result, Detroit seemed to have had less of a problem with garbage than did Philadelphia in its recent city strike.

Garbage Complaints

But as the strike dragged on, the logistics of dealing with so much uncollected garbage started to take its toll on the city. Neighborhoods around central dump sites where the city is storing much of the garbage have recently started to complain of strong odors and increasing problems with insects and rats.

While the strike’s impact was starting to be felt around the city Sunday, many of the strikers seemed deeply divided over whether to go back to work under the new agreement. Before the final results were released, the ratification voting appeared to be close.

Some workers, interviewed after voting at the union’s Detroit headquarters, said they approved the contract because they did not believe they would get a better deal later. They noted that the garbage workers, led by the Teamsters, had been threatening to cross the AFSCME picket lines if a settlement was not reached soon. Without the support of the sanitation workers, they warned, their strike might collapse, and they would be forced to accept a bad contract.

‘Just Losing Money’

“I voted for it because this is all we are going to get,” said Davida Jackson, a data processing employee for the city. “Mayor Young has got us over a barrel, especially if the Teamsters go back in to work. We’re just losing more money every day we’re on strike.”

But others complained that the wage offer in the new agreement was still too small, and they remained bitter over the fact that Young received a 44% pay raise in January, making him the highest-paid mayor in the country, with a salary of $115,000 a year.