MANTECA, Calif. — Three dozen members of Teamsters Local 439 went on strike against Republic Services Forward Landfill here July 8, 15 miles south of Stockton in Northern California.
The company’s garbage truck drivers, members of the same local, are honoring the strike, suspending waste pickup in numerous Bay Area towns, including Richmond, San Pablo, Fremont, Santa Clara, San Jose and Daly City. Pickets carry signs saying, “Hold your nose — Republic Teamsters on strike!”
“The Teamsters Union is aggressively expanding a nationwide strike for fair contracts at Republic Services, one of the nation’s largest and wealthiest waste management companies,” a July 9 union press release said. “More than 2,000 Teamsters are currently on strike or actively honoring picket lines in major cities across the country. More strike extensions are expected in the coming hours and days.”
Teamsters are also on strike in Ottawa, Illinois; Boston; and Cumming, Georgia. The union organizes nearly 8,000 Republic workers.
“I pay more than $200 a week for health care for my wife and me,” Jaime Reyes, a landfill heavy equipment operator for 22 years in Manteca, told the Militant July 9. “Republic only offered a 40-cent increase,” added Saira Rosales, 37, a scale operator for three years. “We want more, and we want lower health insurance costs.”
The landfill workers voted in the Teamsters last year and are fighting for their first contract. “We talked to the Teamster drivers who dump garbage here and they inspired us to fight for a union,” Reyes said. “They said our wages are too low. And our work is dangerous. We work in the sun and we dispose of medical waste with hypodermic needles.”
— Maggie Trowe
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LACEY, Wash. — Teamsters Local 252 members are on strike against Republic Services, a highly profitable national waste management company. The picket line went up July 9.
Will Zekus, picket captain at the Thurston County Waste and Recovery Center, told the Militant the 12 workers get $5 to $6 less an hour than “what everyone else in the area gets paid.” Truckers and other drivers passing by the picket line honked repeatedly in support.
Given the small size of the workforce, Zekus said, they have little leverage to pressure the company. They can’t shut the Thurston County site down because county workers operate the scales and they’re not Teamsters. So the local asked for help from other area Teamsters, and union members in Seattle, Kent, Bellevue and Lynwood picketed and shut down Republic Services in solidarity.
“We had been working on this plan of action for two to three months,” Zekus said. Strikers from Boston came to speak with them, saying the strike would spread. And it has.
“It’s not just about us. Republic says it’s willing to go back to negotiating with us, but we told them: Settle the contract issues with all Republic Service areas now!” Zekus said.
“To the millions of Americans seeing their trash pile up because of Republic’s strike, remember one thing, this corporation has hauled in $77 billion,” the national union said in a press release.
— Barry Fatland
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ANAHEIM, Calif. — “Ninety percent of the drivers are honoring our picket line and refusing to pick up garbage,” said Randy Gamache July 12 at a picket line outside the Republic Services facility here. Gamache and eight members of Teamsters Local 25, who are on strike at Republic in Boston, are staffing roving picket lines outside company depots in Southern California.
Some 450 members of Local 25 struck Republic Services July 1, suspending garbage service for 14 towns in the Boston area.
Gamache, who is from Peabody, outside Boston, has been a trash hauler for 18 years, the last three at Republic. Since it’s a big local, the workers have spread out across the country to explain the issues and win support for their strike.
“We are trying to get equal pay with the other trash hauling companies. Not more, just equal. This is new to me, but the solidarity has been great,” he said.
The trash haulers here are members of Teamsters Local 396. “There is no strike in Orange County, but these workers have contract language that allows them to honor that picket line,” Local 396 spokesmen Adan Alvarez told the media. He said hundreds around the area are doing so.
Janis Gohman, a member of the stagehand union at nearby Disneyland, joined the picket line after her shift while this Militant correspondent was there. She is secretary of her IATSE union local. “I am here to support other unions with the knowledge they would stand in solidarity with us,” she said.
— Norton Sandler
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CUMMING, Ga. — Susan LaMont, SWP candidate for Atlanta mayor, and myself, a campaign supporter, visited the picket line of Republic Services to bring solidarity to the 33 members of Teamsters Local 728 on strike here.
“The strike was extended today at the Youngstown, Ohio, landfill, which handles trash from all over the Northeast — New York, New Jersey and other states,” Eric Massaro, Local 728 union representative, excitedly told us. “They stopped 6,000 tons of trash, about 12 million pounds, from being delivered.” The Youngstown workers are part of Local 728, he told us.
While we were there, UPS drivers and Teamster staffers joined the dozen or so Cumming strikers in spirited picketing. A police patrol car is stationed by the picket line, and strikers face harassment as cops let cars of replacement workers in and out of the facility.
“We will be out here for however long it takes,” Massaro said.
— Janice Lynn