O.C. Trash Haulers End 5-Day Strike

Striking Orange County trash haulers, unable to improve on the contract they rejected a week earlier, ended a 5-day walkout Friday that had disrupted garbage pickup in about 25 cities as well as in unincorporated areas.

The county’s first major trash strike in 20 years had difficulty winning critical support from the public, distracted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a faltering economy.

The settlement means that refuse collection will resume as early as today for almost half the county’s households and about 35,000 businesses. Full residential service will begin Monday. Huntington Beach was one city providing dumpsters at two parks.

“Life is back to normal,” said Bob Coyle, a vice president at Waste Management Inc., which employs 220 of the striking workers. “We are glad to have a contract. We are glad to have our drivers back.”

Many union workers, however, expressed disappointment that they won nothing after five days on picket lines.

“We felt like our backs were up against a wall,” said driver Miguel Angelo at a trash-company site in Anaheim, where he and many union members reluctantly voted for the deal. “We got no help from the public. They could have stopped bringing their trash here. If the trash had started to pile up on the streets, it would have put pressure on the company.”

But the settlement was good news for residents and business owners, who depend on smooth trash removal.

“Fabulous!” shouted Delhi Winn of Huntington Beach after she learned the strike was over.

The job action had halted twice-weekly pickups at her 10-unit Caroline Apartments on 2nd Street. By Friday, the dumpster that “usually holds everything” was overflowing, bags of trash were on the ground and “ants are crawling all over,” she said.

Tree-trimming contractor Steve Brow of Anaheim also was glad to hear the strike-related delays at landfills and trash drop-off stations would end. “Had the strikers continued what they were doing, they would have shut down our whole industry,” Brow said.

Members of Teamsters Local 396 approved the 5-year contract by wide margins at CR&R;, Rainbow Disposal, Taormina Industries and Waste Management Inc. They accepted the same offer they rejected on Sept. 28 despite the advice of their leadership then to take it.

A $1-an-Hour Raise in 1st Year of 5-Year Pact

The agreement raises wages from $12.90 per hour to $13.90 per hour immediately. Wages then rise by smaller increments to $16 within five years. Workers also will receive more benefits and four additional vacation days.

Under the old contract, the base pay was $26,832 a year, with overtime in some cases lifting the annual wage to about $42,000. The new agreement raises the base pay to $28,912 a year, plus overtime.

Progress toward a settlement occurred after federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez convened a series of meetings this week between company and union negotiators. He said he was trying to find common ground so both sides could return to the bargaining table.

The only holdout Friday was Solag Disposal, a division of CR&R; that serves six cities in south Orange County. Although CR&R; workers approved a walkout, about 85 Solag workers have not gone on strike. David Fahrion, a division president at CR&R;, said employees want to review the contract at least another week before scheduling a vote.

Even before the contract was ratified Friday, many drivers and maintenance people reported to work. At Taormina in Anaheim, a few union members walked onto the property in the morning, cast their ballots and headed to their assignments.

Security was tight at Taormina as private guards blocked the entrance during voting. A few Anaheim police officers watched from a parking lot across the street.

When the strike ended, the company’s fleet of trucks--driven by supervisors and nonunion workers--was called back. Several dozen union drivers cheered as each rig drove in.

The strike began Monday when 700 to 800 drivers, mechanics and maintenance workers represented by Local 396 walked off their jobs. Some members said at the time that they believed they deserved a raise of $6 an hour in the first year, plus subsequent increases to give them parity with refuse workers in other metropolitan areas.

Company representatives refused to budge from their last offer and began replacing strikers with supervisors and employees from other departments. Later in the week, the firms started advertising for permanent replacements and hiring staff.

In the end, uncertainty and the fear of losing their jobs overpowered workers’ anger. The strikers capitulated, accepting a wage that is $6 an hour below rates paid in some other California cities, and $1.20 an hour below the county average, according to union officials and the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Ron Shenkman, the president of Rainbow Disposal, said he understood why some workers were unhappy with the final contract, but that the companies need to move forward.

“We have a tremendous work force of people here and I’m not going to pass judgment on those people who might not have liked the contract,” Shenkman said. “We’re happy they’re coming back. . . . We’re very pleased that this only lasted five days.”

Some company officials said that once the strikers better understood the last contract offer, some accepted it by a 3-to-1 ratio. But many workers disputed that interpretation, mentioning, instead, their lack of medical benefits during the strike, low public support and the possibility of being replaced.

“We had everybody against us,” said Ernesto Pelayo, a 42-year-old Taormina driver who works 20 to 25 hours of overtime a week. “But I feel good. We did the best we can. We tried.”

Particularly vexing, workers said, were perceptions that they made more than $42,000 per year. Although some did by working 55-hour weeks, most haulers earned less than $30,000 a year, workers said.

And the timing for the walkout might have been better. Union leaders considered seeking an extension of the contract, which expired Sept. 30, to let some time pass after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But they decided against it because the last time they got an extension on a contract vote, they lost weeks of raises when the new contract was not made retroactive.

Terrorist Attacks Influenced Outcome

“If it was up to us, we would have done it three months from now because of New York City,” said Armando Duarte, a shop steward at Rainbow Disposal. “But it was just our luck the contract expired.”

“It probably was not a good time to wage a strike,” said Nadine Fishel, a labor relations specialist for UC Irvine and a former union representative in Los Angeles. “Usually a trash strike arouses people to have a tremendous amount of sympathy if their trash sits on the street.”

But the public has been preoccupied with death and deeper levels of injustice than the low wages of refuse workers, she said.

Even before the terrorist attacks, the economy was in trouble and the nation’s unemployment rate had crept up to 5%.

Since the attacks, 100,000 airline employees have been thrown out of work and the hotel and tourism industries are troubled as well.

In a nation where labor law is designed to keep business running, strikes are becoming increasingly difficult to win. Strikers must allow access to business properties and businesses can hire replacement workers. Most unions consider strikes their weapon of last resort.

In some large industries, such as the automotive industry with its more than 405,000 union employees, workers can immobilize manufacturing with a walkout. But in a trash-hauling business like Taormina Industries, with its 200 union drivers and mechanics, the company can hire a new staff and resume operations more easily.

Trash haulers decided to walk anyway.

“We’ve gotten very, very little for 10 years,” explained Francisco Cortez, a striking trash hauler and father of four. “We haven’t gotten the raises we deserve. We’ve awakened now. We know our rights.”

And sanitation workers know their desires and needs.

“The impulse we have is to buy a house and be able to keep it up, to feed our families,” said Hilario Perez, 37, a Waste Management shop steward from Santa Ana, who said his wages have increased by $2.45 an hour, or 23%, over 12 years.

Another catalyst for the strike was a blossoming activism that began with the election two years ago of a new secretary-treasurer, former UPS employee Danny Bruno. After a 6-year struggle, he took over the local from a union leadership that workers said was secretive and didn’t look out for their best interests.

“We began to get to know each other, to know what each was going through,” said Jorge Gomez, a Teamsters shop steward at Waste Management. “We took time from our families to make things better and sometimes that cost us personally.”

Even management noticed the difference.

“There were lots of problems that we began to hear about that raised our concerns,” said Coyle, a vice president of municipal marketing at Waste Management. “We were concerned with the growing militancy of the employee group.”

That militancy led workers to reject the initial contract that included an unprecedented $1-an-hour raise in the first year.

“They wanted to make up for the 10 years that they have been treated badly,” Bruno said. They realized, he added, that “jumping up and down was not going to be enough.”

Bruno said a “mob mentality” took over the membership, particularly after members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a reform group vying for control of the national union leadership, urged members to hold out for bigger raises. TDU members disagreed.

“I would say those expectations were there anyway. . . . They see themselves falling further and further behind. You don’t need an agitator to start that,” said Bob Machado, a TDU organizer in Detroit. “They have come to TDU because they do not see that the [current Teamsters’] leadership has the ability to improve where they are at.”

The workers were sour over the final contract provisions. Bargaining committee members Juan Martinez and Robin Saucedo said they were booed by fellow workers at a recent meeting to discuss the details.

“We warned the company,” said Saucedo. “The guys didn’t understand. They wanted more.”

Lack of Health Benefits One Reason to Go Back

But many strikers didn’t realize the consequences of going out on strike, such as having to pay for health benefits during the walkout.

For Jose Beltran, who said his wife suffers from cancer, the risk was too great. On Monday, between stints on the picket lines, he took her to an emergency room. On Thursday, there was a visit to her doctor.

“I need the insurance,” said the 36-year-old father of two. “I have to take care of my wife.”

Bill Huff, business representative for Local 396, acknowledged that strikers have hard feelings toward union leaders.

“This was a resistant yard [Local 396 members],” he said. “But most didn’t understand that after the company gave their last, best and final offer, there is no more. The expectations were so high, but what they wanted just can’t be done.”

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Staff writers Stan Allison and Mike Anton contributed to this report.

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