Workers beat back Waste Management's challenge

Nearly four weeks after the company locked out 481 drivers represented by Teamsters Local 70, the drivers overwhelmingly approved a new five-year contract, 363-3. The new pact preserves health care benefits the company had challenged. New safety regulations preserve workers’ right to appeal alleged violations, a right the company also challenged. A no-strike, no-lockout clause in the contract upholds the union’s right to honor other unions’ picket lines. The pact also provides for yearly raises.

Union and management both expressed appreciation for the persistent work of Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums, who spent countless hours helping to mediate the talks.

“The best thing to emerge from the situation is being able to defeat Waste Management’s effort to drive its anti-union agenda,” Chuck Mack, Local 70 secretary-treasurer, said in a telephone interview. “They put a great deal of money and effort into trying to bully their way through, and they didn’t succeed.”

The results are important for the labor movement nationwide, Mack added, “because this is a case where a union was able to frustrate a major multinational corporation’s anti-union agenda.” Houston-based Waste Management, Inc., is North America’s largest solid waste firm, with operations in Canada and Puerto Rico as well as the United States.