O.C. Trash Haulers Strike Over Wages

Trash haulers across much of Orange County went on strike Monday, halting garbage collection for at least 350,000 homes and 25,000 businesses in what one union official warned could be a weeks-long walkout.

With no negotiations scheduled and unseasonably hot weather forecast for the week, the first Orange County sanitation strike in 20 years could add the stench of rotting garbage to the usual smog for nearly 40% of local households.

Hundreds of drivers, mechanics and maintenance workers launched the action against four private refuse companies days after rank-and-file members of Teamsters Local 396 rejected a new contract offer supported by the union’s leadership.

Although residential impact was only beginning to be felt, county health officials warned that a protracted strike could bring rodents and disease where trash service was discontinued or delayed.

But it did not appear that the strikers were in any mood for compromise.

“They’re keeping us down. Everything is going up but our paycheck,” said Richard Medina, a driver for Waste Management Inc., one of the companies hit by the strike. “This $1 an hour they want to give us for the first year--that’s no increase.”

Wearing gray T-shirts saying “No Contract No Work,” dozens of strikers began assembling their picket lines a few hours before dawn at county landfills, company offices and transfer stations, where refuse is loaded onto larger trucks for delivery to garbage dumps.

They marched with signs saying “On Strike Against” in bold block letters, and then filled in the names of their companies. At the Rainbow Disposal Transfer Station on Nichols Street in Huntington Beach, about 80 picketers wearing blue work uniforms walked the line with picket signs all day, beginning at 4 a.m.

By early afternoon, the presence of picketers had created delays of up to 1 1/2 hours for refuse haulers at county landfills and prevented at least 4,000 tons of trash from being collected and sent to local dumps. The county’s three landfills normally accept about 20,500 tons of garbage a day.

Besides major trash haulers, the county dumps and transfer stations are used by hundreds of independent contractors, including landscapers, drywall installers and roofers as well as residents disposing of their refuse.

Normally the wait is “zero--you just drive right in and wait at the scales,” said Steve Brow, owner of Brow Tree and Garden, who estimated that it took him about 25 minutes to drive his 5-ton truck filled with tree trimmings into an Anaheim transfer station and dump it.

In an unincorporated area of Santa Ana, Doug Kim, 21, worried that he would have to pay someone to haul his trash away. But he was worried even more about the smell in his neighborhood if the strike lingered at a time when temperatures were forecast to be in the 80s and 90s for the week.

“It’s pretty stinking hot for October,” Kim said.

Meanwhile, some of the county’s largest generators of trash, such as Disneyland, had yet to feel the strike. The theme park generates about 15,000 tons of trash a year. Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said the refuse companies have told park officials that “they will do their best to pick up the trash so that our guests won’t notice any interruption in service.”

Union officials said Monday that it might take weeks to end the action against Waste Management, CR&R; Inc., Rainbow Disposal and Taormina Industries. About 700 to 800 employees are involved in the strike.

Company officials estimated that the strike will affect 350,000 to 400,000 homes and 25,000 to 35,000 commercial customers in at least 15 of the county’s 34 cities. Also affected are unincorporated areas, primarily in north and central Orange County.

In the affected cities, trash haulers were scrambling Monday to restore service to priority customers, such as hospitals, industrial sites, restaurants and businesses with high trash volumes. They estimated that 30% of their services had resumed, but that it would take at least a week to continue collections in residential neighborhoods.

Company officials said they are bringing in scores of supervisors and other employees to do the work of the striking drivers and mechanics. They also said they will hire replacements in the days ahead. Waste Management, a national company, indicated that it has replaced about a third of its 220 workers who are participating in the action.

The stage for a strike was set Friday, when the rank-and-file members of Teamsters Local 396 voted down a proposal that would have given them a 33.5% raise over five years, starting with a $1-an-hour increase the first year.

Union members rejected the package although the leadership of Local 396 encouraged them to approve the new contract. Striking workers have been talking about pay increases of up to $6 an hour over five years.

Waste Management Vice President Bob Coyle, a negotiator in the talks, said the companies would withdraw the rejected contract offer if it is not ratified by union members by midnight tonight--an unlikely turn of events, given that no vote was scheduled.

Most Trash Drivers Paid $42,000 Yearly

Under the expired contract, drivers were paid $12.90 per hour, plus benefits. With drivers averaging 15 hours a week of overtime, most were paid about $42,000 per year, Coyle said.

The rejected offer would have raised wages by $1 per hour in the first year of a five-year contract, followed by smaller increases bringing the hourly rate to $16 per hour. Hence, a driver working a 55-hour week would earn about $53,700 a year.

Average Orange County wages for trash haulers--$15.10 an hour--fall slightly below that for clergy, at $15.99 per hour, and above bus drivers, at $14.10 per hour. Social workers, by comparison, average $15.87 per hour and sales representatives $28.09 per hour, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 1999, the most recent year available.

One driver said that under their current work schedule, workers have little time for their families. Jorge Gomez, on strike against Waste Management of Orange, said his income is too low to afford a home in Orange County, so he commutes from Riverside.

“I’m working sometimes 60 hours a week,” Gomez said. “I leave the yard at 5 in the morning and some days I don’t get home until 8:30 p.m. or 9 p.m. at night, and my son is in bed asleep.”

Danny Bruno, a negotiator for the Teamsters, said even with the rejected wage offer, local drivers still would have fallen well behind trash haulers in other California metropolitan areas.

The rejection also was weighted by the Teamsters’ own internal struggles over the future direction of the 1.4-million-member union. In the weeks preceding the vote, local drivers were visited by members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform-minded organization seeking to wrest control of the union from James P. Hoffa, son of the missing labor leader who embodied the Teamsters for many Americans.

In the unincorporated area of Rossmoor, where garbage was scheduled to be picked up today, residents were starting to prepare. Bob and Julie Tessenear had several bags and two containers near the curb ready for pickup.

“I’ll haul it away before I let it sit out here and rot,” Bob Tessenear said.