Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker (left) confers with Chief Steward Jose Solano at the Recycle America facility. PHOTO BY: Tom Price.
by Tom Price
San Leandro, Calif.—Warehouse Local 6 workers at Recycle America stand on a platform 20 feet off the ground as recycling trucks discharge their fresh loads below them. All around the yard, the ground seems covered in a papier-mâché moonscape, but it’s actually a slush of paper soaked in rain water.
Other workers with power shovels load hoppers with mixed recyclables, which then flow along conveyor belts to be separated by hand. Local 6 members sort out plastic, paper, metal and glass and send the materials off to be reused.
All around the trucks come and go, while fork lifts and power shovels dart about everywhere. The chaos is only apparent, as the workers swiftly process society’s refuse in a workplace that is surprisingly orderly. But the work is hard and the pay is low. Chief Steward and bargaining team member Jose Solano remembers the mood of his coworkers.
"The membership was very militant," Solano said. "About a month and a half before we settled, we came back to the membership with the company’s offer without a pension. The workers voted to strike."
Bargaining went on for a year. Pay and pensions were big issues, but what seemed to get under people’s skin was a wage system in which newer workers got less than senior workers.
"People were very upset by the two-tier system," Solano said. His job is driving a fork lift and a loader. "Getting rid of the two-tier made people feel like we all do the same work, and by the last two years of this contract everyone will be paid at the same rate for the same work."
After a year of bargaining, the 80 workers have achieved another contract, retroactive to 2004, with substantial improvements. Workers ratified it Aug. 10.
Local 6 members have had two ILWU contracts at the transfer station. This time, they got both a pension and a wage increase, and an end to the two-tier pay scales that had previously divided the workers. When this six-year deal expires in 2010, many workers will be making about $12.50 an hour, almost twice what they had before unionization. The contract also establishes a pension plan based on earnings. The company will pay workers two percent of their last five years earnings when they retire. They will also have six sick days and one floating and seven paid holidays. Medicals will remain the same.
Recycle America will soon expand the facility and add 20 more workers. More trash will have to be sorted at facilities like Recycle America as cities are finding it cheaper to make one pickup of mixed recyclables and sort it out later. Cities are also mandated by law to produce less landfill, so there will have to be more recycling.
"There’s a serious hypocrisy in making recycling a matter of environmental policy, and making that policy more important than the people sorting the garbage," Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker said. "If it is a matter of public policy to sort the garbage, then the people who do it should be paid a living wage with medical benefits and pension so they can support their families while they do this vital work."
