O.C. Trash Pickup Curtailed as Sanitation Strike Looms

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.

The contract between Local 396 of the Teamsters Union 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 for three consecutive 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 picket lines if replacement trash haulers show up.

Waste Management, one of four hauling companies workers planned to strike, will staff some of its routes with managers. All the companies plan to bring in replacement workers, some from outside the area, if the strike goes into next week, officials 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,” said Danny Bruno, treasurer for Local 396.

Affected cities include: Anaheim, Brea, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Habra, Los Alamitos, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda, plus unincorporated areas.

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

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

The leadership of 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-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,” Bruno said. “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 $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 said 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 also are 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. There are four such facilities in the county, in Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Irvine and Orange. Residents can call their trash hauler or government offices for more information.