Wednesday, May 21, 2008

City Council Gets It Mostly Right & The Enquirer Reports It Mostly Wrong

Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

Guest article by Curt Braman

The Enquirer correctly reported that, on Monday, the Finance Committee of City Council overwhelmingly voted to clear the way for a motion to significantly raise the amount of waste diverted from the landfill through recycling. What they didn’t report was the section of the motion that would require Rumpke to comply with the City’s Living Wage Ordinance. A side bar mentioned the issue, but nowhere did the article refer to the passage of language intended to close what several Council Members referred to as a “loop hole”. The coverage was inaccurate, as well as, uncritical of Rumpke’s tortured explanation of it’s non-compliance with Chapter 317 of the Cincinnati Municipal Code.

The article is on-line here.

The side bar reported: “...Cincinnati City Council’s finance committee also heard testimony from several day laborers who said Rumpke is not paying them a living wage.” No mention of the representatives of the Environmental Advisory Council, The Sierra Club, The Blue-Green Alliance, The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, The Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center who also testified that these workers sort recycling, and should be covered by Chapter 317, and receive a living wage.

Instead the closing paragraph parroted Rumpke’s contention that: “Company officials said they do comply with the law, but shouldn’t have to do so for workers who handle non-paper recyclables, which get mixed in with that of municipalities other than Cincinnati. Those municipalities don’t have a living-wage law.”

So here’s the process:

1) All waste materials collected by the Rumpke recycling trucks are dumped at the St. Bernard Facility.
2) The materials are scooped onto a conveyer belt where temporary workers (by hand) separate out everything except glass, suitable plastics and paper. This includes recyclable items like cardboard and metals, and unrecyclable items like heavier plastics, food, syringes, dead animals and other materials.
3) The glass, paper and plastics move to an a mechanical separator which removes the glass and paper and allows the plastics to pass to the next sorting station. This is done by a Rumpke employee who receives a living wage.
4) Temporary workers separate the plastic containers by type.

And here’s Rumpke’s argument: The temporary workers sort unrecyclable materials away from the paper. Therefore, they don’t sort recyclables, they sort “non-paper recyclables.” Now even if you buy this Orwellian description of the process, there are a couple other problems.

While some of the items are down right nasty to separate from the paper, glass and plastics (and not recyclable), others like cardboard and metal are recycled. At the final sorting station the glass and paper have been removed, but the remaining materials are sorted (again by hand) by type, if plastic, or disposed of, if it mistakenly made it this far in the process.

There is no “loop hole” in the current contract. The only reason that Rumpke has not been forced to comply and pay a living wage is that the Contract Compliance Office bought into this fanciful notion that only paper is subject to the contract; and sorting materials away from the paper is not recycling. How reassuring that we can add the Enquirer’s in depth analysis to the history of this saga of worker injustice.

Still, kudos to Council for doing the right thing, and trying to correct the problem in future contracts. Even more so, if they start working on a way to get justice now, instead of in 2009.

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