Teamster Haulers Reach Tentative Agreement With Republic Services

Waste Management Still Clinging to Substandard Proposal, Union Says

SEATTLE, April 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Teamster sanitation workers reached a tentative settlement with Republic Services yesterday over collective bargaining agreements covering 145 garbage drivers and recycling center workers who service approximately 123,000 residential and commercial customers throughout King and Snohomish Counties.

"This agreement, if ratified, will ensure fair wages, decent health and welfare coverage, and retirement security for our members and their families in the sanitation industry," said Rick Hicks, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 174. "We plan to fully recommend the offer to our members for approval."

Teamsters Local 117 also reached a tentative agreement covering employees at Republic's 3rd and Lander recycling facility located in downtown Seattle.

"The company has agreed to a compensation and benefit package that recognizes the important nature of the services our members provide to their communities," said Local 117 Secretary-Treasurer, Tracey Thompson.

Thompson says she will also recommend the proposal for approval and plans to vote her members on the deal as early as next week.

Teamsters at Republic had voted to authorize a strike and were preparing to fight for good middle class jobs if forced into a labor dispute. Now that a tentative settlement has been reached, the workers say that they can get on with the business of hauling and processing trash, recycling materials and yard waste from thousands of homes and businesses across King and Snohomish counties.

Members offered words of solidarity for over 400 sanitation workers at Waste Management, whose contract with the company expired at midnight on March 31. "We stand united with our brothers and sisters in their fight for a fair contract," said Rick Neapherlin, a container driver for Allied Waste in Bellevue. "We will do everything we can to support them."

Local 117 members at Waste Management whose contract does not expire until 2012 said they would fully support a strike and honor all picket lines should the Local 174 drivers are forced into a labor dispute.

Now that both CleanScapes and Republic have negotiated settlements with the Union, Waste Management stands alone, as Hicks put it, "clinging to a substandard proposal that undermines good middle class jobs and continues to threaten the safety of our communities."

SOURCE Teamsters Local Unions 117 & 174