The World Can Rejoice Now That 'The Great Philly Trash Strike of 2025' Finally Comes To An End
Ricky Fitchett. Shutterstock Images.I'm honest enough to admit that the streets of Philadelphia are rarely ever in pristine condition. We're not a city that is renowned for being the peak of American cleanliness. You're going to find a few bits of trash here and there on the sidewalk. You're going to catch an occasional whiff of piss and shit while walking throughout the city. If you head towards the Kensington section of Philadelphia, you're going to find a bunch of discarded needles strewn across the streets.
There's a level of filth that we've grown accustomed to living with. It's a major city. Being a little dirty is just status quo. But the trash strike over the past week in Philadelphia has taken that status quo, and multiplied it by a hundred.
The city was covered head-to-toe in trash. Maggots were starting to rent property in the city.
That was just one block worth of people reaching their breaking point with the trash strike. With more hot, wet, disgusting weather on the way, it was only a matter of time before the entire city reached its breaking point. I don't even want to know what that would have looked like. It would have created a war zone. Trash piled up as tall as the Comcast Center. A civil war between those who stand with the union, and those who are ready to cross the picket line and deal with the trash themselves. The war would inevitably start to spread beyond the city limits. It would only be a matter of time before the Great Philly Trash Strike of 2025 would have brought the entire country to its knees.
Fortunately for everybody, we don't have to worry about that anymore. Because the sanitation workers are going back to work.
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Now here's the thing--as happy as I am to see the strike be over, I still think the union left a little too much on the table. Not so much in a monetary sense. But they had the city by the balls. They had the mayor in a spot where the entire city was against her. There was more juice left to squeeze. If I were the union, I would have added one last demand into that contract. And that would be for the Philadelphia Eagles to honor an open tryout for any sanitation worker who has dreams of playing for the Birds.
At the very least, we need Hollywood to make a sequel.