Inside America’s garbage labour dispute

Garbage bags overflowing in dumpsters. It flies with buzzing in the air. Bad smelling smoke circulating in the summer sun – an ugly chaos, American cities this summer disturbs the shore from the shore.

Some Republic Services employees, a Fortune 500 special waste management company with municipal contracts throughout the United States, refuse to remove garbage since three weeks ago.

Teamsters Union, representing the company’s workers, says that it is paid well below other sanitation workers and gets worse benefits. However, the company says the union is not willing to make concessions and that it is like garbage while refuting relationships.

The strike started with 25 local 25 local cities in the Great Boston region on July 1: Mantca, California; Ottawa, Illinois; Cumming, Georgia; And Lacey, Washington. More employees stopped working in solidarity.

“What they offer is high in life, I couldn’t live in a month,” said Mike Ortiz, a truck driver from Massachusetts Malden, who has been working in the industry for 17 years.

At the summit, more than 2,000 garbage collectors from all over the country affected millions of Americans. While the Republic and the Union solve some local disputes, there are still many workers.

In the ocean side in Gloucester, about an hour north of Boston, the sharp smell of salt air was cut under the hill of the permanent Funk and Sokakli Seagulls apartment of rotting garbage.

“I mean, I mean, November, December, it wouldn’t be so remarkable, the smell,” he said.

It has become a major problem for the mayor who united the Republic with other five towns and forces to sue due to the violation of the contract.

“When they talk to us before the strike, don’t worry, we are a national company. “This has not been delivered since the first day.”

In the meantime, the Republican services filed a lawsuit against Teamsters of illegal behavior.

“Teamsters’ theft of truck theft, tire cutting, chemical repulsion and hate speech, including the criminal behavior pattern, shows the union’s preference for reconciliation.” He said.

Unity rejects the charges.

Garbage collectors in big cities such as New York and Philadelphia are public employees, but smaller metropolises are outdated to private companies such as Cumhuriyet for a long time. Founded 40 years ago, the company generated $ 16 billion in 2024 and often appeared on the Fortune 500 list.

At the center of the success story, there was a promise to customers: we will overlook your garbage and you will not have to think about it.

But when garbage collapses, things can be ugly.

“This negative relationships, especially fragrant waste and disease, especially fragrant waste – there are other things that we don’t like to see or think,” Madison said. He said.

This can provide the pavement of striking workers.

In Philadelphia, where a separate garbage strike was in headlines this summer, it only took eight days for the city to reach an agreement with the public workers after the garbage overflowed on the streets and the inhabitants of Amok running rats.

Lacey, outside the capital Olympia, in Washington, the union representing the workers reached an agreement with the republic services about a week later and ended the strike. In addition, Mantca, near Stockton, has reached an agreement with the union in California.

However, last week, Bedraggled residents, speaking with the BBC near Lacey, said that they felt the absence of workers during the strike. They defined the dirty diapers as stacked at home and stunning sanitation workers identified working under dangerous and dirty conditions.

The workers on the pile line complained that the Republic has not maintained equipment since two years ago, since Thursston County took over.

Eric Fiel, a senior sanitation worker who moves 1.5 million LBS garbage every day, says, “Things are constantly deteriorating,” he says.

“We have a pump system that continues to break. Basically, it is only accumulating. You pass through this water. Feces, diapers, animal feces, no matter what.”

Will Zekas told the BBC in Lacey that he appreciated the national effort in the US and attributed it to the union’s ability to negotiate a better contract.

“Power lies in solidarity,” he said.

In the parts of Massachusetts’s Teamsters Local 25 strike, there is no symptom of a quick solution. Mr. Ortiz said that the union and the company were further away and later after payment and health benefits.

Each accuses the other of miscarriage.

The company said in a statement, “Republic services focus on the facts and reaches an agreement that provides market leaders to our employees ‘wages and benefits, and focuses on the Teamsters’ leadership disinformation and deterioration.” He said.

Meanwhile, towns and cities have to be creative to keep the garbage under control and dig into their own pockets.

A few towns have created garbage sites where residents can bring their own garbage. Gloucester directed some municipal workers to the task of gathering, while other cities had to provide external resources to different special contractors. The additional cost is stated in the case against the Republic.

However, even cities that do not work with the Republic are struggling to deal with a dead end.

In Boston, where many local businesses trust in the company for a private collection, Mayor Michelle Wu said that he will start to punish the Republic to be able to clean the garbage: “The republican services receive an unacceptable fee for the residents of Boston, the businesses and their neighborhoods.”

In a coffee shop in Malden, a few miles north of Boston, a garbage dump overflowed on Wednesday and pulled a cloud of humming insects.

“I don’t know how annoying I will explain,” Terrible, terrible, really. ” He said. “We need to buy it in the garbage box every week because we have a lot of garbage. When it doesn’t happen, then it creates a big problem for us. And then there is mosquito or other rodents there.”

He’s not sure how long he can get, but he can take some time to wait. The negotiations ended last Friday and there is no date planned to return to the bargaining table.