With One Strike, Haulers Are Waiting for the Next Good Pitch

It’s early October and hot. It’s also muggy. This is no time for a trash strike.

When is a good time for one? Perhaps when it cools down, and the wind is blowing out to sea? When they invent food that refuses to rot?

Until then, Orange County is stuck with its first major trash strike in 20 years. We’re a few days into it, and I get the feeling it won’t last long. It’s a hunch based on the fact that the Teamsters already would have signed a deal with the waste disposal companies, but the rank and file turned it down.

What that says is that a deal is “doable” by traditional labor-management standards. The membership’s refusal to accept it sounds like an echo of what I heard several months ago from a veteran driver: The trash haulers are more united than ever and tired of accepting paltry wage increases.

So let’s view the current stalemate as a passing thing. The trash men want to make a statement that the 25-cent-an-hour increases they used to take are history. So is the strategy of divide and conquer among the drivers of the various companies. So are the days when they make around $13 an hour while trash haulers in other cities are at $20 or above--meaning that Orange County drivers need to pile up overtime to make a decent wage.

Given all that, the drivers’ talk of wanting an immediate $6-an-hour increase may be unrealistically high. That also makes it highly negotiable. Plus, need it be said, these guys need the job?

If that weren’t enough to point to an agreement, I bring the strikers sobering news from the front: The public is hardly in lock-step behind them.

Not far from a Teamsters office in Garden Grove are the Stuart Drive apartments, part of a larger group of apartments in a quiet, well-kept but low-income neighborhood.

Felix Reyes manages the 16-unit Stuart Drive complex and saw a welcome sight about 10:30 Thursday morning: a trash truck making the rounds in the long driveway behind the units. Not a moment too soon: The smell of “ripe” garbage wafted in the common area.

Several moms stood on the second-floor balcony and watched replacement drivers for Garden Grove Disposal haul away trash that had been collecting since last Friday. The moms seemed to be viewing the haulers as one would a liberating army.

“They’re making $13 an hour?” Reyes says of the strikers. “To me, that’s fair. There are some other people around here who work hard, and they make $10 an hour. I heard they were asking for $4 an hour in one raise. That’s a lot for one raise. If they can get one or two dollars, why not?”

Reyes isn’t saying this with any apparent anger or contempt. Nor is he against the striking drivers getting what they can. He doesn’t consider himself on one side or the other. He just has a feeling that with hydraulic lifts on trucks, garbage hauling isn’t as tough a job as it used to be.

In the next breath, though, he says, “It’s a critical job. When you have a key job, of course you want more money.”

Actually, Reyes is on a side: the side of getting the trash picked up outside his apartments.

“You got me,” he says when I ask what he can do about it. “This caught me by surprise.”

Some of the residents have small children, which leads to health concerns if the trash isn’t picked up regularly. “People are aware we’re going to have a few days of smell,” he says. “When you have a fire, you call the fire department. With this, what can we do?”

He’s told residents to tightly bag their trash. If the bins fill up, he tells them, just leave the trash on the ground beside it. Already, Reyes’ maintenance crew has taken some smaller trash bags and stuffed them into one giant 30-gallon bag like the kind used for leaf removal.

My guess is that Reyes’ view is typical. People probably aren’t overly sympathetic about the trash haulers’ plight.

I’m still betting on a quick settlement and hope it’s based on this: Granted, waste haulers aren’t irreplaceable workers. But they provide a valuable service and shouldn’t have to work six 10-hour days to make a reasonable wage.

You’re in luck, I say to Reyes as the trash is hauled away from the complex.

He smiles. “We’ll have a good weekend,” he says.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].