{"id":15805,"date":"2010-04-27T12:33:05","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T19:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/waste-management-contract-talks-continue-after-15-hour-session\/"},"modified":"2016-10-22T18:20:37","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T01:20:37","slug":"waste-management-contract-talks-continue-after-15-hour-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/waste-management-contract-talks-continue-after-15-hour-session\/","title":{"rendered":"Waste Management contract talks continue after 15-hour session"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contract talks for garbage haulers resumed Tuesday between Waste Management<\/a> and Teamsters Local 174<\/a> negotiators after a 15-hour bargaining session on Monday.<\/p>\n

The session lasted until after 1 a.m. Tuesday, said Susan Robinson, director of public sector services for Waste Management, in an e-mail Tuesday to Kent city officials.<\/p>\n

“Waste Management and the Teamsters agreed to reconvene on Tuesday,” Robinson said. “Both parties agreed that services would be provided on schedule on Tuesday. All collections are on schedule.”<\/p>\n

A federal mediator is assisting with the bargaining talks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe union has made significant movement to get a deal and while the company has shown signs of interest, Waste Management is still refusing to provide the same health-care protections provided by other major waste companies in the area,\u201d said Rick Hicks, secretary treasurer of Local 174, on the Local 117 union Web site. \u201cWe believe a deal is within reach if the company is willing to spend money to protect their employees instead of on a slick public relations campaign and unqualified replacement workers who will be a threat to the safety of our neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Garbage drivers ended a two-day strike April 23<\/a> after company officials agreed to resume contract talks.<\/p>\n

Waste Management serves about 1,300 commercial customers and 135 multi-family (condos, apartments) customers in Kent. The company serves nearly one million customers in King and Snohomish counties.<\/p>\n

Single-family homes in Kent are served by Allied Waste, whose drivers agreed to a new four-year contract earlier this month. Allied Waste serves the city’s nearly 16,200 single-family homes.<\/p>\n

The Waste Management drivers have been working without a contract since April 1.<\/p>\n

Local 174 spokesman Michael Gonzales said in an interview last week that there are about 12 significant modifications to the contract by the company that the union wants to address.<\/p>\n

The contract offer from Waste Management includes a wage increase of $1 per hour in the first year and increases of 40 cents to 50 cents per hour in each year of the five-year contract, Robinson said. The average hourly wage for a driver is $26.29 per hour or more than $70,000 per year with an average of six overtime hours per week.<\/p>\n

The company also proposes to increase pension contributions from $14,060 per year in 2010 to $15,101 per year by the end of the contract.<\/p>\n

Drivers would have to pay increases of $20 per month in health and welfare contributions with a proposed increase to $50 per month from $30 per month.<\/p>\n

Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is a large, multi-state company that serve millions of customers nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contract talks for garbage haulers resumed Tuesday between Waste Management and Teamsters Local 174 negotiators after a 15-hour bargaining session on Monday.
\nThe session lasted until after 1 a.m. Tuesday, said Susan Robinson, director of public sector services for Waste Management, in an e-mail Tuesday to Kent city officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15805"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}