Garbage Haulers OK New Pact, End 4-Day Walkout

A divided group of striking Teamster trash haulers approved a new contract Thursday, ending a four-day walkout that had disrupted garbage collection for more than 675,000 residents of Los Angeles County.

“It is back to ‘trashland,’ ” said Clay Butler, a Browning-Ferris Industries trash hauler.

City and company officials were pleased.

“Fantastic, fantastic,” said Peter Feenstra, contracts coordinator for West Hollywood, one of 15 cities affected by the strike.

“We are definitely happy to have everybody back,” said Charles Leonard, district manager for Browning-Ferris, the largest of the five trash-hauling companies struck by the Teamsters. “I think it is good for both sides.”

Leonard said that Browning-Ferris trucks would be working through the weekend to get caught up.

Salary Hikes

Manuel Yanez, recording secretary of Teamsters Local 396, said the contract accepted by the members provided for an immediate 30-cent-an-hour raise followed by 25-cent-an-hour increases in each of the next three years.

The combined raises amount to about 13 1/2% over four years, based on a salary of $7.70 an hour, the current wage of many of the trash haulers.

The companies originally offered a one-year pay freeze, followed by 20-cent hourly increases in the next two years. The union sought a $3.50 hourly pay increase over three years, a total of 46%.

Yanez said union leaders neither advocated nor opposed the management proposal they presented to members, but told the members they believed a strike would last “a minimum of 60 days and more likely six months.”

Yanez refused to provide exact tallies but said a majority had voted in favor of accepting the contract. Butler said tallies provided to him by union officials showed that at Browning-Ferris and GSX, 134 workers wanted to continue the strike, compared to 111 ready to settle. Tallies from the other companies were not available. Union regulations required a two-thirds vote to continue the strike.

Comments after the meeting made it clear that the economic burden of the strike weighed heavily in the vote.

“We don’t like the contract, but we didn’t have any choice. I have to pay my house and the other bills,” said Jose P., 22, a Los Angeles resident who picks up trash for Browning-Ferris on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The trash hauler asked that his full name not be used because of possible reaction from pro-strike union members.

The 15 cities affected by the strike, with a combined population of 400,000, were Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, San Fernando, Commerce, Cudahy, Bell, El Segundo, Gardena, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Park, Lawndale, Maywood, Paramount, Pico Rivera and West Hollywood. Also hit by the strike were 280,000 residents of Belvedere and Mesa Heights in eastern Los Angeles County and Firestone in the southeast, where the county contracts for private trash hauling.

The five companies struck by the Teamsters were Browning-Ferris; Metropolitan Waste; GSX, which is based in Boston; Waste Management of Sun Valley, and Crown Disposal Co. Inc. of Sun Valley.

Yanez said three companies--Western Waste Industries Inc., Carson; Murcole Inc., Compton, and Best Disposal Co., Monrovia-- remained operating during the strike under a 60-day extension of the existing contract.

He said the Teamsters had offered the extension as “a strategy move” that would have permitted them to take business from the companies that were struck.

“If the strike had gone on, it would have helped us win it,” he said.

In an article Thursday about the strike, a complaint about Browning-Ferris Industries’ retirement benefits was incorrectly attributed. Jim Cadena, not Gene Meredith, made the remark. Both men are Browning-Ferris employees.