PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — In November 2023 Portsmouth City Council voted to approve collective bargaining for city employees, and now, they're calling for it to be formalized with an ordinance. Previously: Portsmouth votes to approve collective bargaining for city employees Tuesday night, city employees packed City Hall to tell council it is time to move forward with getting that ordinance completed. "Better wages, safer better working conditions, better benefits," said Richard Deloatch, fleet maintenance mechanic for the city of Portsmouth. That's what Deloatch said collective bargaining would mean for Portsmouth city workers. He was excited last year when City Council voted to approve collective bargaining, but he said that feeling has since gone away. "So far the city hasn't stood up or honored their agreement," Deloatch said. There hasn't been much explanation from Portsmouth City Council as to why. Portsmouth city employees say they face retaliation by their employers when trying to unionize. Adding to that, they believe council needs to create procedures around collective bargaining to help make it a reality. Those procedures would then need to be approved through an ordinance. "You can get, not quite past paycheck-to-paycheck, but it makes paycheck-to-paycheck a little easier when you have those benefits and you have health insurance and dental insurance for you and your children," said Eugene Murphy, project representative for United Electrical Workers. "It makes a lot of things a lot easier." Councilmembers listened to these concerns one by one, and Councilman Vernon Tillage Jr. said after the meeting that there has been some work done on creating that ordinance, but it's not finished yet. "I don't feel or see any progress that has been made," Deloatch said. "Really, I feel like they are putting up obstacles." Said Murphy: "Hopefully, that's our goal, to have them live up to what they said they were going to do." Tillage said another challenge posed is how the new incoming councilmembers will view collective bargaining. He said he hopes for more work to be done once the new members of council are seated.