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IWW Berkeley Curbside Recyclers Union Update
BERKELEY- Workers at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, known as Curbside, welcomed their new operations manager Friday July 1st, with a meeting to discuss their expectations of his conduct. As the new boss sat and listened, Fellow Workers Todd Miller and Dominic Moschella outlined their complaints.
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BERKELEY- Workers at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, known as Curbside, welcomed their new operations manager Friday July 1st, with a meeting to discuss their expectations of his conduct. As the new boss sat and listened, Fellow Workers Todd Miller and Dominic Moschella outlined their complaints.
Dominic handed over a maintenance sheet on every Curbside truck, filled out by the workers. “We want to see all the safety issue stuff taken care of within a week,” said Dominic.
Many of the trucks at Curbside have missing mirrors, broken turn signals, and bad rear view cameras. Many trucks are so old that they break down frequently, forcing the workers to complete their routes with fewer trucks.
“If there were an inspection, most of those trucks wouldn’t even leave the lot,” Todd told the boss.
The workers expect the safety issues to be corrected within a week, and non-safety issues to be cleared up within a reasonable time period.
The workers told the boss they wouldn’t tolerate management driving routes. “We voted unanimously,” said Todd. “Those are union jobs, and management should not be doing union work.”
Also this week, Curbside’s “temporary” drivers attended a union meeting and decided to join the IWW. Shop Steward Dominic Moschella arranged a meeting with management, and two Fellow Workers were hired on a term basis, giving them the right to protection under the contract, health care, vacation and sick time, etc.
Congratulations to Fellow Workers Thomas Matsuoka and Evan Enright-Shulz on their new job status. The issue of temporary work continues to be an important one for Curbside workers as they prepare for contract negotiations.
-Marc Torney,
BERKELEY- Workers at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, known as Curbside, welcomed their new operations manager Friday July 1st, with a meeting to discuss their expectations of his conduct. As the new boss sat and listened, Fellow Workers Todd Miller and Dominic Moschella outlined their complaints.
Dominic handed over a maintenance sheet on every Curbside truck, filled out by the workers. “We want to see all the safety issue stuff taken care of within a week,” said Dominic.
Many of the trucks at Curbside have missing mirrors, broken turn signals, and bad rear view cameras. Many trucks are so old that they break down frequently, forcing the workers to complete their routes with fewer trucks.
“If there were an inspection, most of those trucks wouldn’t even leave the lot,” Todd told the boss.
The workers expect the safety issues to be corrected within a week, and non-safety issues to be cleared up within a reasonable time period.
The workers told the boss they wouldn’t tolerate management driving routes. “We voted unanimously,” said Todd. “Those are union jobs, and management should not be doing union work.”
Also this week, Curbside’s “temporary” drivers attended a union meeting and decided to join the IWW. Shop Steward Dominic Moschella arranged a meeting with management, and two Fellow Workers were hired on a term basis, giving them the right to protection under the contract, health care, vacation and sick time, etc.
Congratulations to Fellow Workers Thomas Matsuoka and Evan Enright-Shulz on their new job status. The issue of temporary work continues to be an important one for Curbside workers as they prepare for contract negotiations.
-Marc Torney,
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Every week its the same - the sound of the homeless and their shopping carts rattling through the neighborhood, stealing the recyclables we leave for the Curbside recyclers. We pay for these twice- first for the deposit we pay on the bottles and cans, and secondly with incresed taxes to support the Curbside recyclers. And when the city recyclers get here, there is nothing left for them to pick up. The system isn't working. Now is the time for change.
Dear "Berkeley Resident".
First of all, you are either misinformed or full of it. Even though there are indeed homeless people (called "poachers") who take some of the (more profitable) materials out of the curbside bins, they hardly make a serious dent in the amount of recyclables actually picked up by the curbside drivers.
In fact, the drivers pick up so much material that they have material weight-bonuses in theri contract when they exceed established weight loads per pick-up. Even with the amount of poaching that goes on in Berkeley, the curbside drivers still gather close to 95% of it all.
You also DON'T pay twice, because the poached material and the material picked up by the curbside drivers all goes to the same place, and that's Community Conservation Centers (Buyback). The poachers don't actually sell the stuff to the Ecology Center, so your fear of being doubly charged is unfounded.
If anything, the poachers are the real losers here, because they carry out a bunch largely free labor in exchange for receiving payment for the materials they bring in (which is significantly /less/ than the wages paid to either the Curbside or Ecology Center recyclers by the way), and as independent scavengers, they tend to mostly undercut each other.
The IWW has even tried to organize the poachers, but that's difficult to do, because they tend to be transitory and some are highly individualistic (even though that is to their disadvantage).
As for cost, Curbside costs significantly /less/ to operate by the City of Berkeley than curbside recycling in most other cities, because it is done by a non-profit using older equipment than the standard corporate WMX or BFI operations that almost all other cities with similar programs use.
I know all this because /I/ helped negotiate the last two Curbside contracts. I suggest that you get your facts straight before publishing similarly knee-jerk reactions in the future.
First of all, you are either misinformed or full of it. Even though there are indeed homeless people (called "poachers") who take some of the (more profitable) materials out of the curbside bins, they hardly make a serious dent in the amount of recyclables actually picked up by the curbside drivers.
In fact, the drivers pick up so much material that they have material weight-bonuses in theri contract when they exceed established weight loads per pick-up. Even with the amount of poaching that goes on in Berkeley, the curbside drivers still gather close to 95% of it all.
You also DON'T pay twice, because the poached material and the material picked up by the curbside drivers all goes to the same place, and that's Community Conservation Centers (Buyback). The poachers don't actually sell the stuff to the Ecology Center, so your fear of being doubly charged is unfounded.
If anything, the poachers are the real losers here, because they carry out a bunch largely free labor in exchange for receiving payment for the materials they bring in (which is significantly /less/ than the wages paid to either the Curbside or Ecology Center recyclers by the way), and as independent scavengers, they tend to mostly undercut each other.
The IWW has even tried to organize the poachers, but that's difficult to do, because they tend to be transitory and some are highly individualistic (even though that is to their disadvantage).
As for cost, Curbside costs significantly /less/ to operate by the City of Berkeley than curbside recycling in most other cities, because it is done by a non-profit using older equipment than the standard corporate WMX or BFI operations that almost all other cities with similar programs use.
I know all this because /I/ helped negotiate the last two Curbside contracts. I suggest that you get your facts straight before publishing similarly knee-jerk reactions in the future.
For more information:
http://www.iww.org
>We pay for these twice- first for the deposit we pay on the bottles and cans
Why don't you redeem them?
Why don't you redeem them?
Unions for vagrant scavengers? Right, I can't wait for that to happen. What are they going to do, go on strike and not work. Do your self a favor, folks. Pay the deposit at the store, smash the stuff up and throw it in the trash. Then you don't have to worry about idiot "homeless" jerks rummaging through your trash.
You are the idiot dave, if your not using tha cans any more what do you care whether a holess takes it or not!"samsh it up and throw it way." for you it's no longer about incoveneyance it's about domanence you see the homeless as inferior so you don't want them benifitteing from any of yyoouurrr trash ,it's trash for god sake , so some homeless guy makes some money on stuff you threw away what the hell do you care?
And i'm almost certian you have the facts wrong when it comes to the desposit or whatever the hell your talking about. In most places you get money for reclyling not the other way around.
And i'm almost certian you have the facts wrong when it comes to the desposit or whatever the hell your talking about. In most places you get money for reclyling not the other way around.
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