The weekslong strike by county teamsters ended this weekend after 94% of the county’s teamsters ratified a new contract that promises them an over 8% raise in the next two years.
That wrap up comes as county trash haulers were raising increasing warnings about delays at the county landfills, where the majority of teamsters work, leading to delays in trash pickups, fires at local trash transfer stations and injuries on the picket lines with trucks injuring teamsters.
The new deal guarantees a minimum raise of 8.25% over the next two years according to Eric Jimenez, the secretary treasurer of the local teamsters union, noting employees would also receive $1,000 of backpay.
Because of the parody clauses within the contracts for other unions like the OC Employees Association, many other county employees will also see their wage bumped up this year from their previous increase of just 3%, but it’s unclear what the actual raises could look like.
Jimenez also noted that if other county bargaining units got a better deal in negotiations next year, those increases would apply to their own contract under their own parody clause.
The new contract was approved by county supervisors in a closed-door special meeting on Friday by Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Katrina Foley, who were joined by Supervisor Janet Nguyen who’d previously not supported a new deal.
“Katrina Foley and Vicente Sarmiento continuously fought to get us what we deserved,” Jimenez wrote in a text to Voice of OC. “Janet Ngueyn decided to talk with us and turned out to be our third vote to get a proposal approved.”
Supervisors Don Wagner and Doug Chaffee, the latter of whom is out of office at the end of the year, did not attend the Friday meeting to discuss the contract.
“Up until the end, Don Wagner and Doug Chaffee lifted not a finger to try to end this labor dispute, and the members will never forget that and neither should the community residents,” Jimenez wrote.
Over the past few weeks, Teamsters had publicly butted heads with county leaders, arguing that the 3% raise and a one-year contract offered by supervisors – who gave themselves a 25 percent pay hike last year – amid months of insisting there would be no raises at all was disrespectful to their members and that the county failed to negotiate properly with them.
The end of the strike also signals relief for a number of small trash haulers who were struggling to keep their businesses alive during the shutdown.
Christina Brittos, who runs a trash hauling company along with her husband, said the shutdown was regularly impacting their business and that the landfill closures had throttled the number of jobs they were able to take because they didn’t know each day where they could take their trash.
“It’s just been so unpredictable,” Brittos said in a Friday interview. “We have had to turn away a few jobs because they wanted it done that same day and our truck was full and we couldn’t dump it.”
