The recent news of Mayor Nutter‘s threatening “Doomsday Budget” and its proposed “infrequent trash collection” made us shudder, thinking back on a particularly dark and smelly chapter in our city’s history: The year was 1986. The average high temperature in The City Of Brotherly Love in July was around 86 degrees. Philadelphia was still reeling from the MOVE Incident, the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt was on his way to being the first third baseman in the history of the National League to win the MVP Award three times, and the Record of the Year was “We Are The World.” Ahh, the good old days.

At the time, Philadelphia’s municipal workers were getting really pissed off, mainly due to the 2-year 10% increased wage package that the city was offering them. (Oh, irony; today, they’d swoon at the idea!) On July 10th, 1986, they went on strike. Libraries and state-run museums shut down, public pools closed for business, but if you ask anyone who was there, they’ll tell you that the worst part was the trash. That’s right: Garbage Workers Strike. Over the course of the 20 day strike, it’s estimated that around 20,000 tons of trash piled up and began to rot across the city. Try to imagine how incredibly hellish that is. Black plastic trash bags would swell and expand in the heat and residents began driving their trash out of the city. Not to mention rats, bugs, etc. Basically, it was the grossest twenty days of everyone’s lives and it fostered a lot more respect for waste collection workers. A LOT.

Why are we thinking of such nightmarish stories this week? A few reasons. Firstly, our friends in Toronto just recently dealt with a garbage strike that lasted twice as long as ours was. Secondly, this was (thank GOD) the last municipal strike that Philadelphia has experienced, but we came kinda close to one earlier in the summer when the municipal workers’ contracts expired and the unions began to protest. Thirdly, it’s been really freakin’ hot lately, and the faint whiffs of trash that we’ve been catching have been stomach-turning enough. Imagining this heat and 20,000 TONS OF TRASH makes us extremely nervous. But the main reason is, that if some sort of budget doesn’t get passed in Harrisburg soon, over 3,000 municipal workers could get laid off, which could easily translate to another disaster like this. We hope that Mayor Nutter along with the rest of the state legislature can get their shit together so we can avoid it, but so, far things are looking kinda grim. The one bright side of the entire debacle was that it managed to unite Philadelphians behind a common cause, namely — hating assholes from New York City — as seen in this sweet clip from KYW 3 Eyewitness News.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 2:05 pm.