Adrianne Shropshire

Striking in Silence

April 3, 2006 marks an important day in the lives of some sanitation workers. Not because it was the day before the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis while he was there supporting striking trash collectors. But because it marked the day that more than 100 sanitation workers represented by the Teamsters went out on strike here in New York City. And for the last 10 weeks, with barely a whisper of media attention, they have continued to maintain their picket lines and their commitment to fighting for themselves and their colleagues on the issues of pension, heath care, and overtime pay.

In sharp contrast to the media circus that surrounds the transit strike, the members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, local 813 have largely been striking in silence. They haul trash for 10,000 commercial vendors in the city including Yankee and Shea stadiums. The issues in the strike are all too familiar to us now. The workers are fighting for the benefits and wages that helped make their jobs worth doing given the hazardous conditions that they work in every day.

Their fight is against a company called Waste Management Incorporated. Waste Management enjoys about $350 million in contracts from NYC. They earned over $1 billion (that's "B") in profits in 2005 on the backs of their workers. And because they refused and wouldn't come to a negotiated settlement with the workers, they imposed a contract on the sanitation workers at the end of last year. And, of course, the workers went out on strike, their last recourse in trying to negotiate with a hostile employer.

A hostile employer who must also address a sticky little environmental justice problem. WMI has a bad habit (more than any other large trash haulers) of siting their waste transfer stations in largely Black and Latino communities. Not a new phenomenon but coupled with the fact that most of the workers represented by local 813 who are getting their take-home-pay and benefits slashed, are also Black or Latino and come from those very communities, you can begin to see the huge insult and burden being placed on communities of color.

This strike has gone on for close to three months. These workers would like to get back to work. But rightfully, they are willing to suffer on the picket lines, even if it's in silence, to maintain a decent standard of living for themselves and their families.

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Posted at 6:38 AM, Jun 14, 2006 in
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