Unionized employees in the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office must return to work, a judge ruled Thursday, after the city sought an injunction amid the ongoing AFSCME DC 33 strike, now in its third day.
In a court filing hours earlier on Thursday, attorneys for the city said cooled storage for dead bodies is getting crowded, and there is a “backlog” of cadavers that need to be examined in Philadelphia’s morgue that has increased due to the strike.
The judge said the strike’s inclusion of members of the medical examiner’s office “creates a clear and present danger or threat to the health, safety or welfare of the public” and ordered staff to return by 3 p.m. Thursday…