The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are joining local union leaders in calling on the Milwaukee Common Council to include a raise for city workers in the upcoming city budget.
The call comes after members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union working across multiple departments in the city of Milwaukee said they are supporting an omnibus package of amendments that includes a 3% raise for all city workers and a 4% raise for city workers who live in the city, a compromise that will slow the erosion of workers’ quality of life as it fails to meet cost-of-living increases brought on by inflation.
“This campaign is a first step toward obtaining economic justice for some of the hardest-working people in Milwaukee,” Ian Gunther, Chief Steward of AFSCME Local 47, said. “At both of the public hearings on the 2026 budget, city workers gave their personal accounts of how they are struggling to make ends meet while providing critical city services and working on crucial city infrastructure. The members of the common council rely on the labor of DNS employees to take care of their constituents’ issues, yet some DNS employees work a second job just to get by; Milwaukee residents rely on Water Repair Workers to get safe drinking water, and yet only a couple years ago, many of those workers banded together in a sick-out to draw attention to their punishing working conditions and low pay—all this, while the city administration failed to provide any raise in last year’s budget.”
The omnibus amendment to the 2026 budget proposes to give city workers a compromise raise and gives city leaders the chance to pay workers wages near what those same workers made last year, before the most recent round of inflation.
“As a Socialist elected official, my office stands with the workers of the City of Milwaukee,” Alderman Alex Brower, the sole DSA-endorsed member of the Common Council, said. “It’s time for this city to appreciate its workers by giving them a well-deserved raise.”
DSA organizers are asking their members to push their alders to support the raise amendment on Budget Adoption day, November 7.
“While the police demand a 15.75% raise and threaten our city with an invasion by the National Guard, our city workers are asking for the first real cost-of-living adjustment in years,” Autumn Pickett, Co-Chair of Milwaukee DSA, said. “Our workers deserve more: I’m proud of DSA-elected Alderman Alex Brower for his proactive conversations with city workers ahead of the budget process to understand the real needs of our community, and I commend the rest of the budget committee for pushing these raises forward to the whole of the common council. Milwaukeeans are paying attention and will remember any alder who votes against the working people who make our city run.”
Milwaukee DSA is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, a just society, and a sustainable environment. Join today at dsausa.org/join.