The City Council of Memphis rejected the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union local 1733’s proposed 5% raise and $5k bonus for city workers on June 23, which includes the city’s sanitation and street maintenance workers represented by the local.
At the June 23 City Council meeting, the proposed 5% raise and $5,000 bonus, a mark down from the original 10% raise originally agreed upon by the union and the City in 2025 was rejected down in favor of a tentative agreement for a 2% raise and 2k bonus.
Union leadership alongside rank-and-file membership gathered outside the city council hall after the vote to debrief. A city worker in street maintenance when speaking to The Worker shared that union leadership “failed to provide rank and file with any instruction on what our next steps would be in our fight for our raise. It was assumed by a number of workers that the fight was over even though some were vocal about their indignation.”
In 2025, the City of Memphis bargaining team approved AFSCME 1733’s proposal of a 10% raise and $5,000 bonus for all public workers through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and the union which includes terms on benefits, salaries, and other forms of compensation. Mayor Paul Young vetoed the MOU and replaced it with only a 2% raise and no bonus. This came on the heels of Young’s personal raise of $40k, bumping his salary to $210k, and Zionist Entity trained chief of police CJ Davis’s salary increase to $280k in 2023.
Additionally, the Mayor said he would not acknowledge the union’s MOU with the city and through later filings claimed that city workers don’t have the right to collectively bargain and sought to invalidate all union agreements.
AFSCME Local 1733 alongside 13 other unions protested outside of city hall last year, demanding city leadership to uphold the MOUs. Aside from this one protest, action on the part of the union remained scarce, with union leadership leaving rank-and-file membership in the dark according to union members who spoke to The Worker.
A street maintenance worker shared that, “Most [union] leadership I’ve encountered are lackadaisical or outright cynical and they have a tendency to blame the rank-and-file for not coming to meetings. We only find out about meetings a day or two ahead of time, if that. People don’t want to pay dues because they figure they’d be better off buying lunch with that money.”
Image: Memphis City Hall. Credit: Thomas R. Machnitzki.
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