UNITY CAUCUS STATEMENT ON MAYOR KENNEY’S BUDGET ADDRESS
Unity Caucus is a group of rank-and-file City workers.*
(PHILADELPHIA, PA) -- At huge risk to ourselves and our families, city workers have been working tirelessly on the frontlines through the pandemic picking up trash, running access centers for students, fixing streets, and keeping health centers running.
We see at work everyday, the city budget has been inadequate for years. Our schools, our libraries, and our parks are understaffed and underfunded. Many essential city departments, like sanitation, are so understaffed with workers so underpaid that they need a constant stream of overtime to get the work done and make a living wage.
Mayor Kenney’s budget proposal leaves last year’s dramatic pandemic cuts in place. 2020’s pandemic cuts have devastated public services, while city residents need city services more than ever to get back on their feet.
At the Free Library, the Mayor’s budget leaves $3.6 million dollars of cuts in place from before the pandemic, and does not restore full 6 day a week service. At Parks & Rec, the Mayor’s budget cuts $2.9 million from pre-pandemic levels. Since even before the pandemic, many rec centers are physically unsafe and staffed by 1 person. In the Streets department, where sanitation workers worked around the clock and contracted Covid at alarming rates, Mayor Kenney cut the budget $11.3 million.
Last summer 454 workers across the city were laid off, nearly half of those workers from the library alone. Most were women. Most were people of color. Most were the lowest paid, temporary workers who get let go and rehired every year. They never have union representation, health insurance, or a permanent year-round job.
These layoffs were unnecessary and harmful, and those workers must be rehired to permanent positions as city services are rebuilt. The budget should not be balanced on the backs of working families, so we are also happy to see the wage tax reduced. But without increasing revenue from other sources this budget proposal simply postpones an inevitable budget gap, and the layoffs and service cuts that will come with it.
We believe that now is the time to seek progressive revenue sources that will provide city funding over the next decades--not just this year. Mayor Kenney said in his address today that we can’t tax the rich, but we know that isn’t true. We can tax the ultra-rich and require large corporations and nonprofits to pay their fair share. Yes, we can do this, even with the PA uniformity clause.
Even during the pandemic, large corporations have made massive profits, like Comcast’s $10.5 billion in 2020 alone.
Our city residents and workers need a Big Business Tax (aka Gross Receipts Tax) on these large corporations that pay a tax rate of less than 1%.
It’s time for large nonprofits like UPenn, Drexel, and Jefferson to pay their fair share. These institutions can pay taxes on the income from their massive endowments, and they can contribute PILOTS, as we know they are exempt.
We need to tax the massive wealth of local billionaires like Brandywine CEO Jerry Sweeney by levying an estate tax on the ultra wealthy and taxing capital gains like million dollar investment winnings instead.
We must also redirect funds away from the police department, toward city departments that promote public safety and welfare. The police department’s budget would serve our city better if it went towards public health, infrastructure, homelessness services, and schools, instead of things like tax-payer funded, multi-million dollar settlements.
Today, we stand in solidarity with community members and union and non-union workers across the city to call on the mayor and city council to create a budget that works for all Philadelpians, by taxing the extreme wealth that exists in Philadelphia and investing it in our communities--not incarceration.
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*Unity is a caucus of AFSCME DC 33, DC 47, and non-rep, non-management employees who are building solidarity between rank-and-file workers across job classes, departments, locals, and district councils, in order to make AFSCME stronger.
We are a caucus of, by, and for rank-and-file workers. We do not claim to speak on behalf of the union or its elected leadership. We are acting on our right to speak up on behalf of ourselves, to bring attention to our working conditions, to organize for mutual aid and protection, and to voice our aspirations about our jobs, our city, and our future.
Unity's mission is to increase democracy, transparency, solidarity, public service, dignified work, and collective power in our union: any rank-and-file City worker or member of our union who agrees with our program may join us.