Taking on Waste Management in Seattle: unfair labor practices

[Hannah Bell]

MEMBERS OF Teamsters Local 174 in the Seattle region are locked in a contract battle with Waste Management, the largest and richest sanitation and recycling company in the U.S...Management spokespeople have made sure the media talk about how much money drivers at the top rate ($26.29 an hour) make. But what they don't say is that it takes three or four years of backbreaking work to reach that.

All sanitation workers at Waste Management here start out in the recycling part of the business. These workers are covered by a contract with Teamsters Local 117. Starting pay is around $16 an hour, and the top rate is around $20. It takes three to four years to be able to transfer to garbage and yard waste pickup in Teamsters 174, and get to the top rate there of $26.29...

What they don't think about are the miserable conditions on the job, which contribute to sanitation workers having the fifth-most dangerous occupation in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They should listen to the stories of workers like Brandon Plantenberg from Tukwila... "A rat jumped out of the can and landed on my face and scratched the top of my head. At the hospital, all my muscles were shutting down. During one test, I laid down, they put a blanket on me, and then I woke up two weeks later..."

Waste Management could easily give the Teamsters what they deserve. The company ranks 196 on the Fortune 500 list of top U.S. companies. It has assets of $21 billion and made $1 billion in profits last year...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/23/taking-on-waste-management


This is the "Undercover Boss" company:

Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM) is a waste management, comprehensive waste, and environmental services company in North America. The company is headquartered in Suite 4000 at the First City Tower in Downtown Houston, Texas, in the United States.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Management,_Inc


WM = corrupt

http://www.stopwmx.org/corrupt.html


WM = monopolistic

"Together with its competitor Republic Services, Inc, the two handle more than half of all garbage collection in the United States.<4>"

[maryf]

1. Solidarity

workers unite. Remember the garbage strike in NYC decades ago??? It worked. Humans deserve decent conditions, or compensation for indecent conditions. K&R

[blindpig]

2. k&r