Latest news with #sanitationstrike
CBS News
16-07-2025
- General
- CBS News
Disabled Fairfield resident hauls trash 2 miles away on wheelchair as sanitation strike continues
It's not just San Joaquin County residents feeling the impact of sanitation workers being on strike. In Solano County, many in the city of Fairfield are also frustrated by the lack of service. Negotiations to end this nationwide sanitation strike ended on Tuesday, with no deal struck. As trash continues to pile up locally in San Joaquin and Solano counties, some neighbors are tasked with a tougher trek than others to keep the curb outside their home clean. With his trash can in tow, rigged to a wagon on the back of his motorized wheelchair, Adam Elsbernd said he traveled nearly two miles to toss his trash at 2 a.m. to beat the daytime heat. His chair even died after the drive to the dump, forcing him to call his wife to help him home. "We don't have an adapted vehicle. We don't have a truck to put garbage with maggots and stuff inside of it because you guys don't want to pick it up," Elsbernd said. His target is one of four temporary dumpsters set up by the City of Fairfield to help neighbors with the dirty dilemma. Trash has been left uncollected for two weeks amid the ongoing sanitation worker strike nationwide. "It's not just about the unions and wanting more money. It's about the people having to deal with garbage in their city," Elsbernd said. "We pay for a service. We are forced to pay for a service living in a city. Now, we have to haul our garbage to a park? A lot of us can't do it." Even with no confirmed date for full trash services to resume, the city is asking neighbors to keep putting their trash containers out as normal. Republic Services is sending some workers from other areas to help pick up trash. "I think what we are trying to get answers to now today is, what can we do?" Elsbernd said. However, Elsbernd remains critical that the negotiations, even if successful, could impact customers down the line. "It's going to come out of our pockets at the end of the day when they raise our rates," he said. There is no new date scheduled for negotiations to pick back up.
The Independent
08-07-2025
- The Independent
Sanitation workers remain on strike with mounds of trash piling up in several cities
Illegal food waste dumping. Business owners cautiously watching security feeds of their dumpsters. Bystanders snapping photos of piled trash bags. Across the Northeast, a pair of sanitation strikes is headed towards their second weeks on Monday, with unions representing workers in Philadelphia and the wider Boston area continuing work stoppages as they demand higher pay. In Philadelphia, where the AFSCME District Council 33 is leading the largest city worker's strike in four decades, city officials and residents alike complained about residents failing to follow adjusted waste rules and illegally dumping, including businesses using temporary sites set up to help collect residential trash. 'In Logan this weekend, we've had a business take rotten chicken and unused oil and place it at our location. Needless to say, this person will be held accountable,' Carlton Williams, heads of the city's Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, said at a press briefing. 'They were arrested and they will be held to the fullest extent of our new process with our law department.' News video captured row after row of trash bags lining certain streets, including Calera and Red Lion Road in the city's northeast. Residents of Morrell Park told CBS News Philadelphia the neighborhood has never looked worse and is filled with the overwhelming stench of trash. "It's not right. I feel like people are really taking advantage of this," a Philadelphia resident told the station. "Normally, our sanitation workers – they don't pick up furniture. They don't pick up sofas, sinks, counters, they don't pick up these items. So people are really taking advantage, and they're using this opportunity to dump everything out of their household." The union, which represents about 9,000 municipal workers across fields including waste management, 911 dispatch, and the water department, met with the city on Saturday and is planning another round of negotiations on Tuesday. The union is requesting 5 percent wage increases over the next three years, while the city is reportedly countering with an offer just below 9 percent growth over that period. District Council 33 president Greg Boulware told NBC Philadelphia the union was potentially willing to scale back its ask. 'We're here,' he said on Monday. 'We're ready to negotiate. We're ready to sit down and we'll stay around the clock.' Further north in Massachusetts, over 400 Teamsters workers employed at Republic Services are also nearing a week on strike, impacting 14 cities and towns around the Boston area containing some 400,000 people. One business owner told NBC Boston he was now surveilling his own dumpster, to make sure people weren't illegally dumping into it, lest he get fined as bags pile up. "I usually keep this dumpster on the other side of the building, but now I have to keep it under my cameras because you come here every day and you find people's trash," Armando Giannasca, the owner of All-Pro Detailing in Peabody, said. Republic has reportedly brought in workers from other states to compensate for the missing workers, while cities such as Beverly and Malden have temporarily stopped collecting recycling. The union claims its workers are seeking comparable pay rates to members who work at other local waste management firms, while Republic says it's committed to 'good-faith negotiation for a fair agreement.'
CBS News
04-07-2025
- CBS News
2 Philadelphia sanitation workers struck by vehicle while picketing during DC 33 strike, police say
Two sanitation workers who were on the picket line in the AFSCME District Council 33 union strike were hit by a vehicle in Philadelphia's Port Richmond section late Thursday night, police said. A driver is already in custody and charged with hit-and-run and driving under the influence. Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said the crash happened just before 11:30 p.m. on the 3900 block of North Delaware Avenue. When police arrived on scene they found a 36-year-old male as well as a 30-year-old female who were struck by a vehicle. Both victims were immediately rushed to Jefferson-Torresdale Hospital. The male is described to be in very critical condition and was taken to have surgery, while the female is being evaluated for bumps and bruises and is expected to be OK. He says preliminary information indicates the victims were sitting in in chairs in front of the sanitation yard when a black Chevy Tahoe jumped the curb and struck them. The vehicle then fled north on Delaware Avenue, turned around and then went back south. Police located the vehicle within minutes on the 3000 block of Castor Avenue and took the driver and the passenger in the vehicle into custody. Small says that the driver appeared to be intoxicated and police located several containers of alcohol inside the vehicle, some opened and some un-opened. He said police were able to locate the vehicle quickly after the crash thanks to a police presence on scene at the picket line. Several sanitation workers who were also on scene and witnessed the incident are being interviewed by police. Small said while the person was intoxicated it is still unclear if the crash was intentional. He also said there are reports that the female worker struck was pregnant. We've reached out to DC 33 and Mayor Cherelle Parker's administration for responses. This is a developing story and will be updated.
Arab News
21-05-2025
- General
- Arab News
Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say
MEMPHIS, Tennessee: A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers' strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday. The fire at Clayborn Temple, which was undergoing a yearslong renovation, was set in the interior of the church, the Memphis Fire Department said in a statement. Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze. Flames engulfed the downtown church in the early hours of April 28. Later that day Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said the inside of the building was a total loss but there was still hope that some of the facade could be salvaged. The fire department said on May 14 that the building had been stabilized and investigators would use specialized equipment to study the fire's cause. 'Clayborn Temple is sacred ground — home to generations of struggle, resilience and creativity,' Anasa Troutman, executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple, said Wednesday. 'This act of violence is painful, but it will not break our spirit.' Located just south of the iconic Beale Street, Clayborn Temple was built in 1892 as the Second Presbyterian Church and originally served an all-white congregation. In 1949 the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and given its current name. Before the fire it was in the midst of a $25 million restoration project that aims to preserve the architectural and historical integrity of the Romanesque revival church, including the revival of a 3,000-pipe grand organ. The project also seeks to help revitalize the neighborhood with a museum, cultural programing and community outreach. King was drawn to Memphis in 1968 to support some 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers who went on strike to protest inhumane treatment. Two workers had been crushed in a garbage compactor in 1964, but the faulty equipment had not been replaced. On Feb. 1 of that year, two more men, Echol Cole, 36, and Robert Walker, 30, were crushed in a garbage truck compactor. The two were contract workers, so they did not qualify for worker's compensation, and had no life insurance. Workers then went on strike seeking to unionize and fighting for higher pay and safer working conditions. City officials declared the stoppage illegal and arrested scores of strikers and protesters. Clayborn Temple hosted nightly meetings during the strike, and the movement's iconic 'I AM A MAN' posters were made in its basement. The temple was also a staging point for marches to City Hall, including one on March 28, 1968, that was led by King and turned violent when police and protesters clashed on Beale Street. One person was killed. When marchers retreated to the temple, police fired tear gas inside and people broke some of the stained-glass windows to escape. King promised to lead a second, peaceful march in Memphis, but he was shot by a sniper while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4. After King was assassinated and the strike ended with the workers securing a pay raise, the church's influence waned. It fell into disrepair and was vacant for years before the renovation effort, which took off in 2017 thanks to a $400,000 grant from the National Park Service. Clayborn Temple was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A memorial to the sanitation workers, named 'I AM A MAN Plaza,' opened on church grounds in 2018. About $8 million had been spent on the renovations before the fire, and the exterior had been fully restored, Troutman said. She said in a recent interview that two chimneys had to be demolished before investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could safely work on the property, but the church organ had been removed before the fire. As the fire was burning, she said, people went to the 'I AM A MAN' memorial and stood at a wall where the names of the striking sanitation workers are listed. 'I watched that wall turn into the Wailing Wall, because people were literally getting out of their cars, walking up to that wall and wailing, staring at the building on fire,' she said.
The Independent
21-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Fire at historic Black church in Memphis was intentionally set, investigators say
A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers' strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday. The fire at the Clayborn Temple, which was undergoing a yearslong renovation, was set in the interior of the church, the Memphis Fire Department said in a statement. Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze. Flames engulfed the downtown church in the early hours of April 28. Later that day Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said the inside of the building was a total loss but there was still hope that some of the facade could be salvaged. The fire department said May 14 that the building had been stabilized and investigators would use specialized equipment to study the fire's cause.
