Garbage Company’s Trashed Promise Sparks Rare Rolling Sympathy Strike

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/story/154765/garbage_company%E2%80%99s_trashed_promise_sparks_rare_rolling_sympathy_strike

AlterNet / By Josh Eidelson

Teamsters in Alabama went on strike against a giant garbage company--and in Seattle, New York and Ohio, workers joined them in solidarity, in a move that's usually illegal.

March 29, 2012 |


Photo Credit: International Brotherhood of Teamsters


Thursday, 250 Teamsters in Seattle went on strike against Republic Services, the second-largest waste disposal company in the United States. Workers in Buffalo, New York, and Columbus, Ohio struck Republic for three days earlier this week. These workers aren’t responding to moves by local management. Instead, they went on strike in solidarity with 24 striking co-workers in Alabama. That kind of strike has become all too rare in the modern labor movement – and it’s usually illegal.

“We’ve made this company what it is,” says Mobile, Alabama striker Michael McLean. “And then you have these people who come in and basically just poop on us. No respect for us.” But after taking workers for granted, says McLean, “they’re seeing it now: There’s garbage still all on the ground.” Striking Alabama workers – all male, majority African-American -- wear signs that read “I Am a Man,” echoing the sanitation workers strike that Martin Luther King was assassinated while supporting. So do their children.

“It means a whole lot to know that other guys stand behind us…” says Alabama striker Robert Agee. “To have that much support from people you don’t even know means a whole lot.” That solidarity – from South to Northeast to Midwest to Northwest – may be what brought Republic back to the negotiating table for the first time in months.

FULL story at link.