The weekslong teamster’s strike is starting to show up on the streets amid delays in trash pickup from one of the county’s largest waste haulers this week.
While trash truck drivers are not on the picket lines, members of the Teamsters Local 952 that work on processing their drop offs at the landfills have spent most of the past few weeks on strike amid stalled contract negotiations with county leaders.
CR&R, which handles trash pickup for several Orange County cities including Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Orange, announced on their website that impacts were coming throughout the county, but did not specify where.
“CR&R Environmental Services is advising customers that the ongoing Teamsters Local 952 labor strike involving Orange County employees is causing delays to solid waste and recycling collection services throughout Orange County,” reads the unsigned statement.
“Limited access to landfill facilities and increased travel times are impacting our collection operations. Our team is working diligently to minimize service disruptions and complete collections as quickly as possible,” they continued. We appreciate your patience.”
The company did not respond to further requests for comment, and a call to Republic Services, which handles most of the county’s other cities, went unreturned on Thursday.
Those delays come after county leaders initially tried to argue the strike wasn’t impacting the landfills, before later admitting in a complaint to the California Public Employee Relations Board that the strike and subsequent picket lines had throttled trash intake at at least one landfill.
County spokesperson Molly Nichelson and County Counsel Leon Page did not respond to requests for comment.
Francine Bangert, a spokesperson for Orange County Waste and Recycling, said that the Prima Deshecha Landfill closed at 11 a.m. today because it’d already hit its maximum capacity of 4,000 tons of trash for the day, and they’d diverted other trash to the Bowerman and Olinda Alpha Landfills.
Eric Jimenez, secretary-treasurer for the teamsters, said that county leaders have not improved their offer amid negotiations and that they’re still in the midst of mediation on Thursday.
He also pointed to a letter showcasing that the public employee relations board turned down the county’s request for an injunction against the union due to a lack of evidence while expediting the labor complaint’s review.
The teamsters union has filed their own separate complaint against the county, alleging the county negotiated in bad faith and didn’t send qualified negotiators to the table, with Jimenez noting they’re now asking supervisors themselves to sit down at the negotiation table.
“Teamsters Local 952 and its members have given the county several different ideas that could possibly end this labor dispute,” Jimenez wrote in a Thursday statement. “Unfortunately, some of the County Supervisors have decided to turn their backs on these workers and the communities within Orange County.”
“Waste companies are feeling the pinch. They need to start calling the county and telling them that they need to settle this labor dispute,” he continued. “The longer these supervisors hold out and continue to not bargain in good faith with their employees, the bigger the problems are gonna get.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
