Republic Services sees mounting frustration from towns, officials amid worker strike
'The City of Boston is already experiencing service disruptions as a result of this strike,' the
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Republic and Teamsters Local 25 have held two negotiating sessions since approximately 400 workers walked off the job, but have yet to end the standoff. On Friday, the two sides met for nine hours, aided by a federal mediator, but remained far apart.
They are scheduled to meet again on Tuesday.
Union officials said that Republic upped its wage offer, but workers would still earn less than those at other waste management companies. The union also said the company 'refused to budge' on providing health insurance that is more comprehensive than the plan Republic now offers.
Advertisement
'We tried everything to get a settlement,' Local 25 President Tom Mari said. 'We even proposed a delay in implementing our health insurance proposal to replace the inferior company health insurance, which would have been a savings to the company. But it was to no avail.'
A Republic spokesperson said union is spreading falsehoods. He said the company's proposal on Friday included a pay increase of about 43 percent over five years, with an immediate 16 percent wage increase. The company said 45 percent of its Greater Boston Teamsters drivers earned more than $100,000 last year.
Republic said it offers a 'comprehensive health and welfare plan,' and pays 100 percent of the premiums. The Teamsters' proposal, the company said, 'offers no significant benefit at a substantially higher cost.'
Stella Tannenbaum can be reached at
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Forbes
Trump Must End Dodd-Frank's Backdoor Tariffs Blocking Critical Minerals & Impoverishing Congo
Amid controversies over tariffs and their effects, one particularly destructive barrier to trade has gone overlooked: restrictions on 'conflict minerals' that exacerbate poverty in the developing world, undermine U.S. access to rare earth metals and critical minerals, and hand a competitive edge to China in control of the global supply of these critical minerals. Ironically, this trade barrier was not erected by President Donald Trump. It came from legislation hailed by many Democrats now critical of Trump tariffs. Nor did it come from legislation particularly geared to trade. Rather, this obstruction of trade was a last-minute insertion into the Dodd-Frank financial regulation overhaul signed by President Barack Obama 15 years ago in July 2010. Dodd-Frank's Section 1502 targets the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recently been a focus of the Trump's administration's strategic plans to access rare earths and other critical minerals to ensure a steady supply not reliant on China. The DRC has one of the richest mineral supplies in the world but is plagued by violence from warlords and militias, including a July 27 attack on a Catholic church that left at least 49 worshipers dead. The Trump administration's African diplomatic team has made headway in striking a deal with the nation in which the U.S. would provide security assistance to the DRC government in its fight against warlords in return for U.S. access to critical minerals within the country. But any such deal would likely be threatened by Section 1502, effectively a prohibitive backdoor tariff on many U.S. companies trying to access the DRC's resources. This Dodd-Frank provision forces publicly traded companies in the U.S. to disclose if any of their products contain 'conflict minerals' mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and nine adjoining African nations. Under the law, firms listed on U.S. stock exchanges must audit their supply chains and disclose if their products contain even traces of four designated minerals—gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten—that might have been mined in areas controlled by warlords. The provision was sold as a way to protect Congolese residents from warlords who profited from the mining and sale of these minerals, with little effect on U.S. consumers and producers. Yet the rule has ended up increasing poverty and violence in the DRC while depriving the U.S supply chain of access to critical minerals needed for everything from smartphones and laptops to medical equipment. The big problem is that companies often face insurmountable difficulties when trying to trace the origins of tiny components of their products. As the Wall Street Journal reported, manufacturers spent about $709 million and more than six million man-hours attempting to trace their supply chains for conflict minerals in 2014. After all this expense, 90% of those companies still couldn't confirm their products were conflict-free. As a result of these burdens in auditing the supply chain, many companies simply left the DRC and Congo region altogether and sourced materials elsewhere. As David Aronson, an acclaimed journalist who has written about the region for more than three decades, put it in testimony to Congress, 'the law imposed a de facto embargo on mineral production that impoverished the region's million or so artisanal miners.' Among the lingering effects of the de facto embargo are reductions in education, health care, and food supply. These woes stem both from the sharp increase in unemployment of the region's miners and – as noted by Aronson in his testimony and in a New York Times op-ed he wrote -- the sharp reduction in mining company planes that also brought food and medicine to the region that occurred after U.S firms left. A study in the Journal of Law and Economics in 2016 found that the mandate from the Dodd-Frank provision increased infant mortality in the affected Congo regions by at least 143 percent. And the warlord situation didn't improve and in fact may have worsened because of the Dodd-Frank provision. An October report to Congress from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found 'no empirical evidence that the rule has decreased the occurrence or level of violence in the eastern DRC, where many mines and armed groups are located.' The GAO also found that 'the rule was associated with a spread of violence, particularly around informal, small-scale gold mining sites, … since gold is more portable and less traceable than the other three minerals.' The poverty and violence that soared due to Dodd-Frank's effects also gave China the perfect entry point into the Congo region. With limited options, the DRC government agreed to China's offers over the past 15 years of building infrastructure in return for granting China access to its minerals. Now, as China has failed to deliver promised infrastructure improvements, the DRC is looking for a new deal with the U.S that will focus on boosted security and trade rather than aid. But any such deal will likely fail as long as Dodd-Frank's burdens on U.S. companies accessing the minerals continue. As the GAO notes, the rule's near-insurmountable burden – that 'many mines are located in remote, potentially insecure areas, and coordinating teams to visit and inspect them is difficult' – remains standing as a trade barrier. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank provision allows the president to waive its mandate for two years if he deems such a waiver to be in the interest of national security. President Trump, as part of his goal of U.S. resurgence, must make use of this waiver to reduce China's influence and increase U.S. access to the region's minerals. Then, he should call on Congress to end this trade barrier by repealing Dodd-Frank's Section 1502. It's time for the president and Congress to remove this backdoor tariff from Dodd-Frank that puts China first and the U.S. and DRC last. John Berlau is Senior Fellow & Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the book George Washington, Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father's Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
NI house sales website PropertyPal bought by Dublin firm
PropertyPal, Northern Ireland's main house sales website, has been bought by a company which operates a similar business in the Republic of Ireland. The new owner is Dublin-based Distilled which operates the house sales and rentals website. Distilled's other brands include the DoneDeal online car marketplace. Last year, PropertyPal merged with rival site Propertynews, although the two continue to operate as separate brands. That deal came after the entrepreneur Cecil Hetherington bought into PropertyPal. Mr Hetherington is the founder of Used Cars NI which is also being bought by Distilled. In 2023, Distilled made a pre-tax profit of €12.2million (£10.6m) on turnover of €41.4m. Emma Marley will continue in her role as CEO of Used Cars NI. Likewise, Jordan Buchanan will continue in his role as CEO of PropertyPal. The companies will be overseen by a new Northern Ireland Board to be chaired by Cecil Hetherington.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
‘The IMG Academy of the North,' an $83 million youth sports complex, will soon break ground in Stow
Had it been around just a couple of years ago, it's the type of place that might have kept an elite New England talent such as Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up It's a model proven by the pioneer in this realm, IMG Academy of Bradenton, Fla., which for decades has consistently sent top-flight athletes to the college and pro ranks. Advertisement 'We're trying to create the IMG Academy of the North,' said Peter Masters, the founder of MAI. 'New England has the best private school market in the world and so many students that are heading to private schools are just looking for better athletics than their public schools can offer, but all the schools are still doing the same training that they've been doing for the last 80 years — three sports, three-month seasons, shorter schedules, history teachers and admissions directors as coaches and they don't have full-time professional people. Advertisement 'You cannot, over a four-to-six-year period, compete with kids who are doing 4,000 to 6,000 more hours of sports. Just anecdotally, I can tell you that's impossible.' Masters spoke after giving a tour of the grounds and the 312,000-square-foot former Bose headquarters where classrooms, dorms, dining halls, a robotics lab, esports, and strength and conditioning spaces will eventually be filled with more than 600 students. Peter Masters, founder of Masters Academy International, gives a tour of the former Bose property. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff In Year 1, MAI will offer majors in ice hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer, lacrosse, figure skating, golf, fencing, and esports to a class size of around 300 students, a mix of boarders and day students of middle school and high school age. For each sport, the school has hired sporting directors with established résumés, a list that includes former Northfield Mount Hermon coach John Carroll for basketball, and Mike Anderson and Topher Bevis, who are both coaches in the Boston Junior Bruins program, for hockey. A separate basketball pavilion, turf fieldhouse, baseball diamonds, soccer and lacrosse fields, and a pool will be built. Plus, USA Fencing is moving its main operations from Colorado Springs to Stow in order to have its own high-performance training center for aspiring Olympians located far closer to the sport's primary Northeast recruiting grounds. A typical school day at MAI will feature three hours devoted to skill-building and internal competition in a student's sport, with another hour for strength and conditioning, both the physical and mental variety. This intensive multi-sports component to MAI is what will distinguish it from any of the private boarding and day schools in the region. Advertisement Given New England's deep academic roots, Masters and everyone connected to MAI understands that the academy also has to offer a comparable education to every other school before any family commits to shelling out an estimated mid-$50,000 a year for day students and low-$70,000s for boarders. To that end, MAI has brought in Rich Odell, the head of school at IMG Academy from 1999-2016, and Michael Schafer, head of school at The Newman School in the Back Bay, to collaborate and advise on creating a five-hour-a-day curriculum and hiring faculty. 'We have to have a really good academic program. The New England area is the hot spot of education, and hence we have to do the best to get the best and stay the best,' said Odell. The school also plans to be sensitive to the reality that not every MAI student will graduate with the ability to make an athletic impact at the college or professional level. An exterior view of the former Bose property where Masters Academy will be located. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff 'We have to look at ways to make sure that they are being stimulated in the value of having that sport focus, which comes to a piece that I've not done elsewhere and we'll be doing here, which will be the nonplaying sports majors,' said Odell. 'Sports medicine, sports psychology, sports management, which are all similar in terms of time commitment to actually playing the sport. A student will be instructed in that through a partnership with universities who offer sports management majors and with professionals in the Boston area.' Schafer sees MAI as filling a new niche for parents already paying plenty, a la carte style, to get their child maximum exposure to their sport without sacrificing a college-preparatory education. Advertisement 'Walnut Hill School for the Arts, for example, is a school that is basically for high-level performing artists, and they have a specific high school curriculum for those students — and there's ski academies, soccer academies, hockey academies,' said Schafer. 'I think a lot of schools would like to lean into more of this but they're afraid to give up the integrity of their mission.' Like other private schools, MAI is not cheap. Making it affordable for those who need help is part of the plan. 'There's a significant number of people in New England private schools that are paying the full rate, but we know that if we want to compete on a national stage, we're going to have to have a strong financial aid program,' said Masters, who said MAI's financial assistance offerings will be at similar levels of comparable local institutions. Masters and his brother, Chris, are co-owners and directors of the Junior Bruins. They have first-hand knowledge of hockey parents, as good of a sports parent cohort as any when it comes to understanding the lengths families will go to to provide their kids with the best possible athletic experience. When the brothers decided to explore creating a multi-sports academy, they already knew that the business of youth sports was in growth mode. The Aspen Institute estimates youth sports in the US brings in $40 billion in revenue a year. As a point of comparison, the NFL generated $23-plus billion last year, according to Sports Business Journal. The brothers quickly learned that the real estate aspect to the project was easily the highest financial bar to clear. The Bose campus features the main building, a modern warren with a utility infrastructure as well as lights, chairs, tables, white boards, dining hall equipment, and even its own water treatment plant. Advertisement Dorms still have to be built, but having a virtually turnkey building at the Masters' disposal meant the project could dodge expensive start-up construction costs. Last May, MAI purchased the 82-acre parcel for $2.2 million. Last month, Cognita, a London-based global schools group owned by private equity firms, closed on its lead investment in the project, which will join MAI with more than 100 other Cognita schools around the world. 'We are incredibly proud to be a founding partner in Masters Academy International,' Frank Maassen, Cognita's Group Chief Executive Officer, said. 'MAI embodies the Cognita spirit — combining world-class education with real-world preparation and personal ambition. With its focus on academics, athletics, life skills, wellbeing and leadership, it offers a truly holistic education that nurtures the whole student.' Individual co-investors comprise the remainder of the ownership group. If future planned phases pan out, the total investment at MAI is expected to exceed $100 million. For Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, MAI came out on top in a competition among New York, Bradenton, Fla., and Salt Lake City to become his sport's new home because it had everything going for it. 'There isn't really a high school right now, or middle school for that matter, in the US that balances really high academics and really high-end fencing training,' said Andrews. 'We have some very high-level coaches in the area, which gives us a racing advantage here, we like the style of the project that's being put together by Peter, Chris, and Rich, we like the location, the financial agreement works well for us and ultimately, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, through Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, has made us some commitments that they will make every effort to really embrace fencing.' Advertisement When Bose shut down its operations in 2020, the town of Stow lost its biggest employer and taxpayer. Other entities, including industrial warehousing, affordable housing, and a nonprofit school, expressed interest in the property, but MAI was the best match, said Denise Dembkoski, town administrator of Stow. 'I joke that Peter rolled in here four years ago and I have not let go of him,' said Dembkoski. 'This will put us on the map a little bit, maybe more than a little bit. I think USA Fencing is going to put us on the national map.' Property taxes, as well as tuition taxes, paid by MAI are expected to eventually exceed the nearly $300,000 annual payments from Bose, said Dembkoski, who hopes that the school also will help spark new businesses in the town and region, from restaurants, ice cream shops, and barber shops to perhaps even a hotel. When Bose shut down its operations in 2020, the town of Stow lost its biggest employer and taxpayer. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff 'It's such a benefit to this community,' she said. 'It's like a jackpot for all the benefits we'll see. There will be some growing pains with school traffic or fencing traffic, but that's really it. There's not a lot of downside.' The 190 full-time jobs MAI says it will create caught the attention of the state. This summer, MAI was one of eight projects the Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved for participation in the Economic Development Incentive Program. Over five years, the school will receive $2.85 million in tax credits. State Representative Kate Hogan of Stow, along with Driscoll, helped steer state support to MAI, citing it as one of the 'strong private-public partnerships that are critical for the Massachusetts economy. 'It's a project that will have a transformative effect for my small town and also will be an incredible asset to the Commonwealth. It's all good, and we know in this economy and where we are right now that wins are important, and this is clearly a win.' The notion that MAI or another academy like it could have kept a talent such as Flagg, Dybantsa, or a top prospect from any sport from leaving the area is not purely hypothetical. Carroll led the acclaimed basketball program at Northfield Mount Hermon for decades before leaving three years ago. He heavily recruited Flagg, but in the end, as Carroll knew and Flagg's parents confirmed to him, the Montverde Academy near Orlando offered more basketball opportunity than Northfield Mount Hermon could. 'We were close, but in reality, in the end it wasn't close because the opportunities for him to really chase basketball were just more available to him at the other school than it was at mine,' said Carroll, speaking the same day Flagg was picked No. 1 in the NBA Draft by Dallas. When Carroll heard about MAI's mission and philosophy, he understood immediately how the academy could fill a vacuum. 'The market is telling us that they want a higher level of access to academics and athletics without apologies, and I think that's what Masters is going to offer,' said Carroll. 'It's going to offer the highest-end athletics-academic combination on the terms of our market, and I think it's going to be really well received. I think the timing of it is perfect for what's happening in college athletics, what's happening in professional athletics, and the opportunity to really see a return on investments that families are putting into their child.' Michael Silverman can be reached at
