With students returning to class soon, an overflowing dumpster at Malden High School prompted a fresh wave of concern.
With students returning to class soon, an overflowing dumpster at Malden High School prompted a fresh wave of concern.
As of Monday, it has been exactly one month since waste management company Republic Services and striking Teamsters met at the negotiating table in the hopes of ending a work stoppage that is impacting communities across Massachusetts.
With the labor dispute now in its eighth week and there still being no signs of a breakthrough or even continued negotiations, local officials are growing more frustrated.
The latest flashpoint occurred at Malden High School, where an overflowing dumpster is causing alarm just over a week before students are set to head back to class. City Councilor Karen Colón Hayes says she is hearing from concerned parents and is working to address the issue with Republic and the city’s Department of Public Works.
Some students and staff have been using the building over the summer, contributing to the trash there. But Hayes also thinks that some fed up residents decided to dump their trash at the school. When the school year starts on Aug. 27, the trash problem there will only get worse.
“The fact that it looks like that now, with just a small amount of people there, is concerning,” Hayes told Boston.com Monday.
Similar scenes have been playing out around Massachusetts since members of Teamsters Local 25 began their strike on July 1. They say that Republic, a Phoenix-based company that generates around $16 billion a year in revenue, refuses to give them the wages, benefits, and labor protections they deserve.
Bargaining sessions throughout the first few weeks of the strike were marked by plenty of finger-pointing, accusations of bad-faith negotiating, and even allegations of criminality. A federal mediator stepped in multiple times to help broker a deal, but talks continued to break down. The two sides last met on July 18, and there are no future meetings scheduled at the moment.
Fourteen Massachusetts communities, mostly located on the North Shore, contract with Republic to handle curbside waste removal. But the company also has thousands of commercial customers, such as restaurants and apartment complexes, in places like Boston and elsewhere. Republic is relying on non-union replacement workers to fill in, but many say that service has been sporadic at best.
