Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A Rally in Support of A Living Wage for Rumpke Workers & More Recycling for the City

Posted by Media Release

Day Labor Organizing Committee
Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center

JOIN US MAY 19 at 12:00 PM

The Finance Committee will meet May 19 at 1:00 to pass a motion that will affect the City’s negotiations with Rumpke. We will show support for the right kind of motion at Noon, and participate in the public comment session at the Committee meeting that starts at 1pm at City Hall.

What: A Rally in Support of A Living Wage for Rumpke Workers & More Recycling for the City: 12pm outside of City Hall on Plum Street.

Who is will participate: Community, Labor & Faith Based groups and individuals in support of Rumpke Workers, The Sierra Club, The Day Labor Organizing Project & The Blue-Green Alliance

Flyer available here:
http://www.dlop.org/city_hall_flyer.pdf
Phone contact: 513.621.5991

Background on the struggle for living wages and increased recycling in Cincinnati

MORE VICTORIES

Rumpke recycling workers with the help of the Blue-Green Alliance have succeeded in bringing change to their jobs. By bringing public pressure calling for Rumpke and TLC to change, they now receive free transportation to the job site and the right to choose their own transportation back to TLC (avoiding the previous mandatory $7.00 fee). Earlier, they won changes to pay policies that have eliminated the 2 hour wait after each shift. They have won freely supplied safety equipment instead of paying costly fees.

CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

The employers have refused to pay the City’s living wage as mandated by law. Currently City Council is considering a motion that would require the City to include strong living wage language and increase recycling requirements in next year’s contract. The current contract expires on May 31.

One draft motion calls for a living wage for ALL recycling workers and an increase in the refuse diverted from the landfill to 30%-40%. We strongly support this motion. Please call the Mayor and City Council Members in support of this draft. Tell them you support a living wage for all Rumpke recycling workers and an increase in recycling to 30%-40% of the waste stream!

Please call Cincinnati Council members this week (May 12-16) to make sure that when the motion on Rumpke is brought up in the Finance Committee on Monday May 19 that it include a living wage for all day labor workers at the Rumpke recycling facility:

1.Vice Mayor Crowley: 352-2453,
2. Jeff Berding, 352-3283; jeff.berding@ cincinnti-oh.gov
3. John Cranley (Chair of the Finance Committee, 352-3653,
4. Chris Monzel, 352-3653,
5. Cecil Thomas, 352-3499,
6. V.Laketa.Cole, 352-3255,
7. Lelsie Ghiz, 352-3344;
8. Roxanne Qualls, 352-3604,
9. Mayor Mark Mallory: 352-3250,

In Solidarity,
The Cincinnati Day Labor Organizing Project
at the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center
40 E McMicken, Cincinnati, OH
513 621-5991

Planning for the Rally
If you are interested in working with us on the rally, please contact us or come to a meeting to plan our strategy for the rally:
Saturday May 17, at 10:00 AM, Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center 40 E. McMicken (Nu BlendBuilding, entrance to our office is in back of the building.)

• Share This Article!
Listen to this article

Socializer!

Username

Password

Auto-login on future visits

Show my name in the online users list

Forgot your password?

Register

Anonymous comments are allowed, but you can create an account above to stamp your name and to avoid typing the anti-spam code.

If you are not familiar with our rules for leaving comments, click here! The Cincinnati Beacon is not responsible for the contents of any comments. Comments do not represent the views of the moderators of The Cincinnati Beacon.

Freedom Fighters says:
14 May 2008  at  09:16 pm | #

.
Done

.

anon says:
16 May 2008  at  12:04 am | #

I don’t understand.  Rumpke is paying people what for what and providing transportation .....?

Curt Braman says:
16 May 2008  at  01:05 pm | #

anon 12:04,
Rumpke has a City contract to provide recycling services to residents of Cincinnati. The contract pays Rumpke over 2 million dollars per year plus the proceeds of selling the recycled products to vendors. About one third of the workers at the St. Bernard facility are Rumpke employees. The rest are subcontracted from a labor agency named TLC. They are paid the Ohio minimum wage. Prior to this campaign they were required to use TLC’s transportation that cost $7.00 round trip from Central Parkway, even though both TLC and the Rumpke facility are on an easy to use bus line. They were not allowed to take the bus or drive to work.

On February 1, 2003, City Council passed a living wage ordinance. The ordinance governs any employer who has a service contract with the city that exceeds $20,000.00. Employees covered by the ordinance include those workers who spend any of their time fulfilling the contract. Employees of subcontractors, like TLC, are also included. The current Living Wage� is $10.80 per hour.

In the run-up to the vote, council member John Cranley said he thought a living wage was very important on moral grounds. “I do not want the city to be contracting with companies who don’t pay their workers a fair wage. This sets the bar”, he said.

Rumpke’s St. Bernard plant is the final stop for the city’s recyclables. Everyday, roughly 50 workers sort the garbage and recyclables that arrive at the plant. They separate plastics from cardboard, remove glass items, trash, and hazardous materials - including dead animals. The workers sift, sort, and separate. When these sorted materials leave the plant, Rumpke sells them to vendors for reuse. The workers make this recycling possible. Rumpke has stated that the work they do exceeds the scope of the contract and therefore are not “covered employees”.

The workers picture in slides 5 & 7 of Rumpke’s recycling website, located here:

http://www.rumpkerecycling.com/recycling_basics/residential_slide_show.aspx

are the workers Rumpke claims are not separating or sorting materials pursuant to the contract. Another question is why would a company like Rumpke use temporary workers everyday? It’s not a question of demand. They use about 50 temporary workers every single day. Go figure?

Peace,
Curt

anon says:
17 May 2008  at  06:54 pm | #

Thanks so much Curt.  excellent piece.  So the next question is, why aren’t the employees suing Rumpke and TLC for back wages? And why isn’t the city enforcing the law? A mandamus is necessary.  The workers should contact bob newman, randy freking, ,,,

This should be a major story - who the hell is tlc owned by?  Don’t all contracts entered into with the city state the living wage info?  Heck, if this were legal then all companies could get a contract and then create a side company to do the payroll functions and by pass the intent and purpose of the law.

The transportation issue is probably billed as helping workers in reality it is a type of imprisonment where they take them far fromtheir homes without a means to get back and that way someone can’t leave work when they want.  what are these people, indentured servants?  slave labor?

Curt Braman says:
18 May 2008  at  06:58 am | #

anon 6:54,
The Day Labor Organizing Project & The Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center have been supporting these kinds of campaigns by low wage workers for the last several years. I don’t want to talk in detail about our strategic approach in this struggle, but we have in the past (and will in the future) used legal, legislative, organizing and community pressure tactics.

For some reason, the City Solicitor’s and the Contract Compliance Offices have declined to find Rumpke in violation of Cincinnati Municipal Code, Chapter 317. You can find it here:

http://www.municode.com/resources/gateway.asp?pid=19996&sid=35

Sec. 317-1-C2.  Covered Employee.
“Covered employee” means a full-time city employee or any person who is employed as a service employee of a contractor or subcontractor under the authority of one or more service contracts with the city and who expends any of his or her time thereon, including but not limited to: restaurant, food service or banquet employees; janitorial employees; security guards; parking attendants; gardeners; waste management employees; and clerical employees, provided however, that persons who are employed pursuant to federal or state laws relating to prevailing wages shall be exempt from this chapter. (emphasis mine)

This phase of the campaign (and we know it’s just one step toward winning) is meant to work with our allies on City Council to develop a strong statement of their expectations of the City Administration in upcoming contract negotiations with Rumpke. The contract then returns to council for approval.

The current contract seems to be very clear. It defines the term Recycling to include the type of work performed inside the plant by these workers, and leaves little room for misunderstanding.

Recycling is defined in Section 1 as “the series of activities, including collection, separation, and processing, by which products or other materials are recovered from the solid waste stream for use in the form of raw materials in the manufacture of new products other than fuel for providing heat or power by combustion. Further, the Description of Services in Section 2� requires Rumpke to weigh, sort, prepare and transfer the Recyclable Materials to the buyer of the materials.

To date those responsible for the contract’s enforcement (the City Solicitor and Contract Compliance) have held that the workers you see sorting recycling in the slide show, mentioned in my previous post, are not part of the recycling process. As an aside, TLC workers are easily identified because they wear yellow/orange helmets. Rumpke employees wear blue, and supervisors wear white.

We’ll post updates when available and
Thanks for you interest,
Curt

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

<b>

<i>

<u>

quote

code

@

<a>

Close Tags

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: