DC 37 rank-and-file bloc wants a $30 pay floor in the next city contract

A bloc of rank-and-file workers inside District Council 37 wants the next city contract to include a $30-an-hour pay floor, telework made permanent and raises of 6.5% every year. Bargaining for the union’s roughly 100,000 members is expected to gain speed this fall, and the group is pressing DC 37’s leadership to adopt those demands.

Young, left-leaning workers make up much of the insurgent bloc. They have spent more than a year organizing from within, taking local leadership posts and building strength in the delegates assembly, which votes on matters that affect every member. Many of them say it was their pressure that got Zohran Mamdani, then considered a long shot, onto the union’s candidate rankings in last year’s Democratic primary.

What DC 37 members want in the next city contract

The pay floor borrows from a Mamdani campaign promise: a higher minimum wage across the city by 2030. Reformers argue that city workers, where the mayor has direct power, are the obvious place for him to start. Thomas Hummel of Local 1321, the Queens Library Guild, put the aim plainly: “We’re trying to hold him to account on that.”

The demands rest on long-standing complaints. Members argue that raises in earlier contracts lagged inflation and did little for workers in the lowest-paid titles, school crossing guards among them. Remote work is another flashpoint. Executive director Henry Garrido secured a telework pilot for some civil servants in the last city contract; it has been extended several times, but workers say it is applied inconsistently. Garrido was also a key designer of the plan to shift city retirees to a privatized Medicare plan, which fell apart after strong opposition from retirees and younger members.

Adrian Singleton, a Local 375 member who serves as a field coordinator for the campaign, said the union does not engage deeply with its members and the campaign aims to involve them in its decisions. Local 3005 delegate Cristina Rodriguez-Hart recalled her first delegates assembly meeting, where she said newcomers like her were sidelined in the discussion.

Mamdani’s promises to city workers

DC 37 backed Mamdani in the primary. Last October, ten days before he won the 2025 mayoral race, he made a final appeal to the union’s members and delegates, promising to work with Albany allies to reverse pension rollbacks and to secure raises in line with the cost of living in the nation’s priciest city. “It’s time for us to see the value of your labor,” he told them.