Garbage Workers to Strike

With more than 700 sanitation workers set to strike over wages at 4:30 a.m. today, residential trash collection was expected to halt in much of Orange County.

Trash company representatives would not speculate on how long the strike might last but issued a statement Sunday saying residential collection would be “postponed indefinitely for most cities and county areas.”

“We are only picking up critical accounts, like hospitals, health care services and food services,” said Bob Coyle, vice president of Waste Management Inc., which serves eight Orange County cities.

With both sides refusing to budge on wage demands, the strike could stretch on. The contract between Local 396 of the Teamsters and four trash-hauling companies expired Sunday, two days after rank-and-file members voted down a proposal that would have given them a $1-an-hour raise each of the next three years.

The companies said they would bring in replacement workers, but union leaders countered that those workers would meet stiff resistance wherever they tried to pick up garbage. Union workers at places such as Disneyland will be asked to honor the picket lines if replacement trash haulers show up.

Waste Management, one of four hauling companies where workers plan to strike, will staff some of its routes with local managers. All the companies plan to bring in more replacement workers, some from outside the area, if the strike goes into next week, management officials said. The other firms are CR&R; Inc., Rainbow Disposal and Taormina Industries.

But Danny Bruno, treasurer for Local 396 of the Teamsters, said, “They won’t be able to replace these workers as easily as they think they can. . . . I’ve never seen the guys more unified.”

The strike will affect Anaheim, Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, Los Alamitos, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Villa Park, Westminster, Yorba Linda and unincorporated areas.

Service in most other Orange County cities could also be disrupted if workers refuse to cross picket lines at transfer stations.

The only Orange County cities that would not be affected by the strike are Buena Park, Costa Mesa, La Palma and Newport Beach.

The leadership of Teamsters Local 396 last week encouraged workers to approve a contract offer negotiated with the help of federal mediators that provided a 33.5% raise over five years, starting with a $1-hour-an-hour increase the first year. But the sanitation workers, who earn $12.90 per hour, have said they want a raise of as much as $4 an hour the first year.

Now union leaders are pushing the cities to pay higher disposal fees to the trash companies, so the companies can pay workers a higher wage. City officials so far have shown no interest in renegotiating their multiyear contracts with the companies.

“Workers with the Los Angeles and San Francisco sanitation departments make well above $20-an-hour,” said Bruno. “If the residents of Orange County paid just 99 cents more a month on their trash bill, the workers could get the contract improvements they want.”

Coyle countered that Orange County trash haulers already earn an average of $42,000 a year. “This is not a living-wage issue,” he said.

Union officials are not rushing to return to the negotiating table. Instead, they will begin a door-to-door campaign asking residents to lobby city staff to renegotiate their trash disposal contracts so workers can get paid more.

The Teamsters are also launching “ambulatory” pickets, where union members at any business where replacement workers try to pick up trash--such as Disneyland, which requires three pickups a day--are asked to join an impromptu picket line until the nonunion replacements are gone.

City officials asked residents to hold onto their garbage, or bring it to a disposal facility themselves. There are four such facilities in the county, in Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Irvine and Orange. Residents can call their local trash hauler or government offices for more information.

Where to Bring Trash

* Orange: 2050 North Glassell.

* Irvine: 16132 Construction Circle.

* Huntington Beach: 17121 Nichols St.

* Anaheim: 2740 Coronado