Well here’s some good news in light of the recent garbage strike (from the Seattle Public Utilities website):
Beginning Wednesday, August 1, garbage can customers who have been affected by the strike may drop off up to 6 bags of either garbage or yard waste in any combination at the transfer stations for free. Yard waste should not be in plastic bags. Recycling drop off is always free.
Hours
8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., 7 days a week
Of course, that means waiting in line at the dump for however long; but hey, we at Friday North shouldn’t have to worry about trash buildup, right? After all, we’re recyclers!
By the way, did anyone else receive the robo call on Tuesday from a Waste Management striking driver named Brent about how we should all stay off the roads now that the striking drivers have been replaced? My 10 year-old listened to it and said, “Are the garbage trucks going to run over little kids?” Nice. Very nice.
Well, more good news is that Waste Management is telling residential customers to put out their trash today if they’re normally serviced on Wednesdays, so hopefully that means we’ll have service this Friday.
Just stay off the road, please!
I got the “oh my god, hide your children” robo call on my cellphone last night. I’m pro-union, but tactics like that do not help the workers’ cause.
Yeah, way to stay classy…
We just got the robocall at home, which happens to be my office as well. All it did was break my train of thought and annoy me.
I’m a union supporter in general, but I find that call perplexing considering the multiple garbage truck bicycle accidents in this city.
As an obvious strike breaking move by Waste Management, there’s a chance these new hires will be sent home by the courts, working with laws that we inherit from prior generations. I sure hope that’s how it works, and we can afford to coast along and cluck over whether the unions are getting the right tone in their message.
Why is everyone so much more worried about what their waste situation looks like right now MORE than the situation for the drivers? All they want is to be payed the same wage as their co-workers. Please do what you can to support the people that help you to stay comfortable in your worldly situation by trucking off all your waste.
To drop your garbage at the transfer station you need both your drivers license and a copy of your utility bill showing your current address. I don’t keep copies of utility bills, so guess I’ll be keeping my garbage too…
I don’t have over-flowing garbage, but I have over-flowing recycling (and I even have two large recycling bins)! My yard waste will so be over-flowing after this week’s lawn mowing (I guess I should tell them to not rake up the grass).
Jessica,
Did you see how much drivers are paid? I read that after three years, they are paid $68K per year…that’s more than I make and I have a college degree! I’m already ticked that my water/sewage/garbage bills averages $350 every other month…can’t afford for it to go up even more.
Does anyone know whose trash, recycling, and food/yard waste bins are lined up in front of the Wallingford Playfield entrance on 43rd? They’ve been there for weeks now and nothing has been collected (they were there long before the strike). Is it leftover from the family festival?
well, they applied for this job,, and got it. They could have applied for the other job..
There are many places and areas of work where people are paid differently.. look at difference in small shild care schools and larger private ones- staff income.. how about difference in what school districts pay.. or Macy’s vs Target… Chase vs WTCU..
they are still asking too much and being unfair. They had an increase 2 years ago. Who else did?
I’m just waiting for the teamsters to bus in bears and raccoons to get into our garbage.
@Jessica, In general, for most of us, if you want to be paid a higher wage, you go find another job. Most of us don’t actually know what others make. We just have educated guesses. And when you do deem you are underpaid you don’t hold your employer’s business hostage. Microsoft employees wouldn’t stay home because Amazon’s stock is doing better. The independent baristas show up even though Starbucks baristas have benefits. If they are upset, they don’t hold their collective breaths and pout. They find another job. WM offered these guys $68k which is a 17% raise. That’s not counting benefits. I know software devs willing to work for about half that.
That seems pretty good for this economy. Especially when the bar to a newbie doing your job is a Class B driver’s license and a couple months of navigating our streets.
right on Chris
`… you go find another job!’ ah ha ha ha. You should go to work for Waste Management as a motivational speaker. Those recycle pickup drivers could bring their wives and kids and you could explain to everyone how they can quit their $35K gig and find a better paying job to support their families! Don’t forget the accounting, though – let’s see, how much should you have saved up, if you’re going to follow that advice in 2012?
I urge a little skepticism for all. Does anyone know with certainty that the offensive robocall (a redundancy) was made by a union member and not Waste Management?
So, speaking of garbage – did anyone try to go to the dump (sorry – transfer station) today? If so, or if you went by there – how long was the line?
/r
@Don, Where do you get the $35k #? All articles on this topic cite the WM garbage truck drivers avging $58k now, and that an offer of $68k + benefits was rejected because they want what the recycle guys get (+$9/hr more). Which doing the math means they’re asking at least $76k. (2000 hr work year x$9). So where are you getting $35k?
As for your point that there are no other jobs to be had, then one might consider that before turning down $68k . In any event, extorting your employer is not an ethical alternative.
My source is unfortunately comments on this same site after a previous article. You can reckon compensation various ways – including benefits, after taxes and required contributions, etc. Annual full time pay came out $35K before taxes for recycle drivers, $54K for garbage, based on $17/hr and $26/hr respectively.
You have to decide for yourself what’s ethical, but you have to recognize that union strikes are not just accepted but honored by a large segment of the US and other free countries. Is `if you don’t like it, there are 100 people standing in line to take your job’ not extortion? Freedom is an empty word if you’re cornered.
Collecting garbage is a dirty, dangerous job that helps guarantee the city is healthy enough to prevent breakouts of serious disease.The guys work long hard hours, put up with impossibly clogged streets. They are in daily contact with disease causing materials. Seattle is one of the few major cities to not require citizens to park off their streets on garbage pickup day, and are out there collecting all the citizen refuse in the rain, snow, ice and heat. Not many of us want the job for good reason. What’s the alternative. Hmmmm. We could all compost everything in the back 40, burn the paper In the trash pile, melt down the metal or haul it personally to a recycle. I’m sure you will all love the smell of the guy next door’s burning trash. What’s your hourly? Would you like to spend two or three hours of it getting rid of your trash? Can’t afford to take the time off? Well then you can spend part of your day off hauling your trash. I guarantee it that a couple a weeks hauling, and burning and burying and fighting with your neighbors because the let there’s pile up for a week or two will find all the complainers begging these guys to come and haul for them. There’s a reason munipalities create systems that require garbage to be picked up. We would all be knee deep in our own waste if we didn’t. And by the way, what makes anyone think he or she should earn more in a white collar job than doing one that serves every person in the city. People who work with their hands and serve us all are just as worthy of high paying jobs.
BTW. Why doesn’t this site have an edit before you post feature?
Part of the problem seems to be that garbage truck drivers are paid significantly more than recycling truck drivers. I have heard no justification for this.
So cut the pay of the garbage truck drivers, raise the pay of the recycling truck drivers, so that they get paid the same amount, and in the aggregate they are paid the same as they do today (so no increase in your bill). When the garbage truck drivers cry bloody murder replace them with new permanent hires. Problem solved.
Get TIm Eyman involved. Surely we can cast this as some anti-tax action. Maybe he can be useful for once.
I went the transfer station today. I showed my driver’s license, and I dumped 6 bags of yard waste for free. All the SPU employees were very friendly. I saw a guy come in on his bike and he was allowed to dump his small bag of yard waste without waiting in line.
Recycling can be dumped at the transfer station for free, anytime.
I waited between 5 – 10 minutes at about 2:30.
Oddly, our dumpster got emptied today or yesterday. Maybe there are private companies available?
@Margaret, I believe the waste carts at the playfield are from the Family Festival. Not sure why they weren’t picked up before the strike.
@Chris W, Commercial and multiple residential properties get priority over single family for pick up during this time.
As someone who has been part of a union, I have to say, it is not an easy decision to strike. Striking is the VERY LAST resort when all other options have been exhausted. It is a very risky, challenging, complicated decision individually and collectively. The feeling from some of the comments is that these workers are simply greedy and take their decision to strike lightly. Yes, people who are employed may be lucky to have jobs now, but that does not give companies free reign to take advantage of their employees. I’m sure there is a lot more to the issue than the 65K…a salary I imagine many are not actually earning. Union busting is alive and well. I wouldn’t want to be a garbage collector, nor do I have the ability, and I appreciate those who do.
We are fortunate. This is our chance to experience what it will be like if we choose the option to have garbage pickup every 2 weeks.
@Joan Only a couple folks said they make too much money. At least I didn’t. I have no issues there. My point was that extortion isn’t an ethical option for obtaining a raise, and that the barrier to entry for performing this job isn’t that high, so in capitalist society supply and demand drive pricing for everything. (@everyone else: Yes I know as a nation we violate that principle all over the place with subsidies and what not.).
It seems that too often collective bargaining and union representation take the place of self actualization through accountability, and I think that’s what chafes most people.
Using the definition of extortion is not only wrong, but very misleading. Contract negotiations are very much legal and a part of everyday business.
The general public never sees the real issues in most labor disputes, other than two organizations are fighting and one side is seen as very greedy. There is so much fine print that is being fought over, but that doesn’t sell headlines.
If WM didn’t agree that the workers they have weren’t worth the the fight, they would be more then irresponsible not to break the union by hiring people ahead of time to take there place.
Just think, all companies could fire their employees and hire new ones at daycare worker or teacher wages. That would really make society fare. That argument is just pathetic.
Steve
Chris. This issue is complicated by the reality that a large portion of persons working in waste management are of color. They live in a nation where self actualization is often denied to all but the brightest of those from working class families and has become available only in the last 25 or so years. Secondly, self actualization is quite often relative to where you are coming from. Becoming a driver for waste management could quite certainly apply if the worker comes from a poverty background. I think we often think of that term only in regards to the person who rises from the bottom and soars into the professional strata. We forget that the scavenger birds soar just as majestically as the eagles, kills nothing to earn his daily meal and sanitizes the earth.
@Steve/E30 You don’t think if a company could fire everyone and replace them with people with the *same qualifications* for a fraction of the cost they should? Have you ever run a business? Think about what you just said.
(And I am very liberal by the way, so this isn’t an R tea-party pro-business rant. )
I assure you this happens all the time. In software it’s called offshore development. People with computer science PhDs working for under $8/hr. Is it fair? It depends. Here, we may have to simplify our lifestyle to get by, in India they may now be able to afford to move to an area where they can drink the water.
Turnover doesn’t happen in union shops, and what has happened as a result? -The whole company goes under when it can’t compete with its bloated cost structure. Look at our auto industry.
We aren’t entitled to a higher standard of living in the US just because we’ve always had one. We are part of a world economy whether we like it or not. The days of keeping a union job for life are coming to an end.
@Chris: Do you believe in a minimum wage? Because it sounds like you’re arguing against one.
@Joan, I agree completely with what you are saying, but I don’t see how that union helps them in any way shape or form.
I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by the auto industry and the “good enough for government work” mentality of its workers that is still prevalent today. I used to go in to the plants and repair machines that had been sabotaged out of fear they were eliminating those jobs. We sent 4-5 people and received an escort by security to make sure we were safe when doing so. To protect a job that required the skillset of picking up a car part and moving it from one conveyor to another.
So my comment about preventing self actualization is in the context of the complacency that arises from knowing it’s pretty damned hard to get fired.
@Doug, Yes of course. (I also believe in welfare before I get that question.) But the minimum wage (and welfare for that matter) should be variable and based on the actual cost of staying above the poverty level.
Extortion: The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.
Not sure how I was wrong on that one.
For those who might be scratching their heads over that last item, “under color of official right” – this was part of a legal definition created by the Hobbs act in 1951, if I understand what I’m reading. It applies to public officials, concept very closely related to bribery.
US law has recognized the right to collectively withhold labor at least since the 19th century, and the 1935 NLRA made it illegal to replace striking union labor as Waste Management proposed to do. You can call it extortion if you want, but like I say,a lot of other aspects of relations between employer and employee meet your unusually broad definition of extortion equally well.
Chris’s definition of extortion is one of the reason’s labor unions were formed in the first place: management was obtaining “property” (labor) by inducing fear amongst its workforce.
you said i tAndy, cut the pay of the higher paid group, I would. That’d get them back to work.
@Chris if the minimum wage should be variable and based on the actual cost of staying above the poverty level here are some statistice from the US Census.
Federal Minimum Wage $7.25 per hour =$15,080 a year
Washington State Minimum Wage (the highest in the nation) $9.04 = $18,803 a year
Montana Minimum Wage for small companies $4.00 = $8,320 per year
Oklahoma minimum Wage for small companies $2 per hour = $4,160 per year
Median income of US in 2011 according to CNN $49,445
US Poverty level according to Census
1 person = $11,702 per year
4 people = $23,201 per year
So it looks like Federal Minimum Wage and Washington State Minimum wage will keep one person above the poverty level if they work 40 hours a week every week of the year..
I am a substitute teacher. I made 12,xxx last year. I also work part time for catering company, one which keeps having less and less work.
I have 8 yrs of college/univ training and 20+ yrs teaching experience.
And yes, I know how to apply for work- ageism becomes a cement wall after a while. No, I no longer go to the Food Bank because of pushing, the desperate air of mental illness and hoarding. No, I do not have medical insurance,
I said based on staying ABOVE poverty level, meaning that the calculation for poverty level be used as a constant in the equation, not the entire equation. Like the prime lending rate influences the loan apr you actually get based on any number of other variables. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I am not advocating lowering it…