by Tom Price

After more than a year of hard bargaining, warehouse Local 6 office workers nailed down a contract that raises wages and maintains benefits with Waste Management Inc.

The contract secured five years of 100 percent employer-paid healthcare, maintained a company-paid, union-sponsored pension, and brought $3.20 an hour more into the pockets of the 88 workers at six Waste Management facilities in Alameda Co., Calif. They also got an additional holiday and better contract language. Labor and management signed the pact in April,  retroactive to Nov. 1, 2004.

But it started out pretty rough, Chief Shop Steward and bargaining team member AnJanette Levingston said.

”They began by offering us 10 cents for the first year,” Levingston said. “They really low-balled us, it was insulting. They would give us 10 cents and wanted us to pay into the pension.”

The clerical workers joined Local 6 in January 1998. At the time, their issues were company abuse and disparate treatment. Currently they make between $16.50 and $23 an hour. They do the work as customer service representatives, support representatives, receptionists and cash processors. They also work as service machine clerks, data entry clerks, mail room clerks, operations clerks, multi-lingual and dispatch clerks. Waste Management is one of the largest refuse companies in the world, with North America’s largest number of landfills and recycling centers. Local 6 has union contracts for landfill and recycling workers in California and both of those contracts were up for negotiation during 2005.

The bargaining began in October 2004. The company brought in an attorney from the anti-union law firm Littler Mendelson, and the bargaining schedule had to match their availability, as well as the employer’s and union’s schedules. The contract expired Oct. 31, 2004 and talks continued, with very little movement, into the winter and spring.

“After many sessions, they upped their offer a nickel,” Levingston said.

So bargaining team members Levingston, asst. steward Amy Gallow and Vicki Crenshaw hunkered down for a long fight. They worked late researching their company and others in the waste disposal businesses. They took apart the contract and re-wrote parts of it to make it less one-sided and pro-management. This drew praise from their local President, Efren Alarcon.

“This committee was very dedicated and very knowledgeable,” Alarcon said. “They worked on their own time for many, many days.”

Alarcon, BA Victor Pamiroyan and Local 6 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Pecker joined the team early on and provided guidance. The team used their time to really go into the contract language.

“We had a lot of bad language, mostly on seniority and job bidding,” Levingston said. “We had many examples of why the language should be changed. Sometimes they’d put up qualifications for the job and tailor the job to someone they wanted to hire. Or they would award someone a job and not tell anyone.”

Workers also complained that union transfer applicants with any discipline on their records couldn’t get the job. The team got that loosened up so only someone who had serious discipline within the last nine months couldn’t bid.

“People change, they may have done something at one time, but later on they get it together,” Levingston said.

“The seniority rules also needed a little fine tuning,” Levingston said. “The old contract allowed a temporary employee who had qualifications we didn’t have to stay and we could go.”

The new contract recognizes union security and seniority. Bargaining continued into 2005 with give and take on both sides. Gradually, un-dramatically and with great patience, the union got most of what it wanted.

“I take my hat off to the committee,” Alarcon said. “They were some tough cookies, they know their operation well and they have many years of seniority, so the company couldn’t lie to us.”