Strikers Return for Cleanup : Trash Men’s Din Is Music to Ears of Philadelphians

When she awoke Saturday morning, Lydia Black, who lives near one of 15 emergency garbage dumps, couldn’t believe her ears. The whirring, thumping, scraping and shouts of garbage men working were too good to be true.

“I had to come out to see if I was really hearing the right thing,” Black said, gazing through the gray haze at a dozen bright yellow trucks gathered, like giant insects, around a mountain of green, black and brown plastic bags.

It was true. The city’s 2,400 striking trash haulers, who Friday night began firing up their trucks and incinerators, were back on the job after a strike lasting 18 days. The massive cleanup of 40,000 tons of garbage was under way.

Mayor W. Wilson Goode, armed with a contempt of court order, had threatened to fire the workers if they refused to report for work by Saturday morning, and Common Pleas Court Judge Edward J. Blake had threatened to fine their union $40,000 a day, beginning Monday.

“I feel good about being back,” said Wayne Davis, a driver. “I missed a lot of money.”

“No contract. I don’t feel good,” shouted another man, who refused to give his name.

Although the workers at this westside dump are divided in their feelings about being forced back to work by the dual forces of law and financial need, other Philadelphians who had watched and smelled the dump grow were united in their relief.

For many, the 15 official dumps and countless unofficial ones, with their stench, rats, roaches and flies, constituted a humiliating and dehumanizing decay of their surroundings.

“I feel bad enough being stuck in the ghetto,” said Barbara Johnson, who lives near the dump. “But coming home from work when you’re tired and seeing this is just doubly depressing.”

Johnson, who operates an encoding machine at a downtown bank, said that huge green flies have made it from the dump to her 17th-floor apartment. “It’s disgusting,” she said.

Occasionally touching her face as the humid breeze shifted, Johnson expressed hope that the cleanup would restore some of her lost verve. “At least I won’t have to hold my nose when I catch the train,” she said.

Deprivation Unequaled

Uncollected garbage, it seems, has the power to disturb like no other deprivation of city services. No one, for example, complained about the museums’ and libraries’ being closed by the municipal workers’ strike.

Many said that the fear of disease, rodents and vermin was a factor. But everyone agreed that the sheer filth simply offends and debilitates.

Ralph Bellamy, a retired state worker, stood for a long time gazing at the dump. At one point, he said: “It tears you apart, knowing you have to live in filth like this.”

Some here saw the Philadelphia strike and the one in Detroit as symbols of a loss of order, of big cities gone crazy.

“I’m thinking about getting the hell out of Philadelphia because we don’t have this kind of stuff back home,” said Bellamy, who used to live in Conway, S.C.

Meanwhile, the work went on.

At this dump, Charles Green, a shop steward, said that practically all of his workers--even some who were injured--showed up. As each one arrived, he shouted a jovial greeting.

Members of the trash force wore masks, and some speculated that it would take a long time to clear the mountain of bags by hand. How long, no one knew--just as no one knew how long it would take for District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to agree on a contract with the city.

The trash force is scheduled to work through the weekend. Negotiators probably will, too. Earl Stout, the union president, said he expected to present a contract to the rank and file by Monday.

However, another union officer called Friday’s all-night bargaining session with city negotiators “fruitless.”

“All of it fell apart,” said David Valentine, a spokesman for District Council 33. “The city is playing games.”

Valentine said the union will hold a general meeting for its 12,885 members today and might then urge sanitation workers to stop reporting to work.

“We fully expect that that back-to-work order will be stayed,” he said. The union has appealed that order and the subsequent contempt citation. A hearing is set for Monday.

The union is asking for a one-year contract with a 13% raise and a $48-million payment to its health and welfare fund. City officials have offered a 12% pay increase and a one-year contract and are demanding the right to independently audit the fund.