OK, this is my first post, so take it easy on me now…
In my neighborhood, Thursday is usually garbage day. But this morning as we woke up we remembered that Monday was Labor Day so the garbage pick-up would be a day late.
The question is this: If the garbagemen can get their weeks’ job done in 4 days during a week with a holiday, does that mean they’re slacking off or stretching out their work during a normal 5-day workweek? Are these garbagemen trying to scam us taxpayers into paying them for a full time job when it’s really a part time job??
No offense if there are any “sanitation engineers” out there, this is just something that has bugged me for a while. Thoughts?
What it means is that they work harder this week because the pails are more full and harder to carry, because of the day off. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get paid overtime because it takes time to catch up. The truck fills up faster too, introducing more logistics problems.
How can they be scamming you. They contract to pick up a certain amount of garbage during a normal week. If they can do that job in 4 days (probably by working longer on those 4 days), then how is that working part time?
I say, I do not care what day they pick it up and I don’t care if they can get it done in one day. I will happily pay them to pick up my garbage.
Hmmm, seems other towns do it differently than mine. Everywhere I’ve lived (in NJ), when there is a holiday, the garbage collection is skipped that day, and it continues to pile up until the next collection.
As a municipal employee, I can say this…the trash pickup guys do more than just pick up the trash. They do work full eight hour days. But they don’t get paid for the holiday. So, if they work Saturday, they get overtime. I don’t complain about it, because I get the holiday off with pay.
My trash service has found a better way to handle this.
Our pick-up is on Monday, and we are supposed to have the trash out by 6am. Reality is that they never get here before 10am. Our poor guys have to work on holidays (but get overtime pay).
Normally it is part of the “on your way out to work on Monday take the trash out” routine, but on holidays it is easy to forget. Guess what days they decide to start the route bright and early. Most holiday Mondays are started with the sound of the garbage truck tearing down the street at about 6:30 (rarely stopping since nobody remembered to take the trash out). They are home early I’m sure with extra pay to boot.
Well, here, on the north side of Berkeley, in the particular section where I am, pick-up day is Thursday. They picked it up today, the Thursday after Labor Day. Berkeley is a very screwed up place; but for some reason, the trash and recycling services seem to work on schedule. Trash is both Berkeley’s most important ingestment and its most important product.
I’ve lived in a suburb that collected garbage every fifth working day, so at each holiday the Monday pickup would shift to Tuesday, Tuesday to Wednesday, and so on. Maybe the city was just too cheap to pay overtime. I can’t speak to the slacking question, though.
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
I am a Municipal Employee too. Mostly I work the back of the Garbage Truck.
After a holiday an extra truck gets put out.
The town is broken up into five routes. One truck per route per day. After a holiday it takes three more men than usual and other services suffer.
Yesterday I loaded 14.5 tons.
I have to go in now and it’s raining. I’ll have more to say later.
Well the work day is done. I have been thinking about this all day.
I think I earned every penny of my salary today and everyday. We are the best deal your tax dollars buy.
Today it was raining. Water weighs something like 8.3 pounds per gallon. We picked up about a ton and a half more today than we did last Fri. People worry about taxes but leave the lids off their cans. So today we paid $48.00 per ton at the landfill for the 1.5 or 2 tons of water we brought.
Where is the head of the person that put 15 lb. of dog shit in a paper bag and then put it in a puddle.
We have a recycling program in town but I can honestly guess that 25% of each days load could have been recycled. That’s $50.00 to $100.00 per day that could be saved if people weren’t lazy, stupid, or I suspect both.
I ask for that much of a raise and suddenly it is a lot of money. But the politicians are too afraid of losing a vote by enforcing the rules they made. I feel they are buying votes with my tax dollar.
Well it felt good to vent a bit. We can never say anything to the residents, they are always right. The bosses and politicians don’t care as long as their phones don’t ring.
In case nobody gets it let me say it so you will understand. Oink Oink Oink Grunt Grunt Oink Oink Oink Oink.
Actually, I don’t think the point was to denigrate the hard-working employees of the sanitation department. We just want to know why they take a day off on holidays, when it means they will have to work an extra day on the following Saturday anyway. Do they prefer to have a three-day weekend followed by a one-day weekend to having two regular weekends? Overtime has been mentioned, but couldn’t they earn overtime for working on the holiday?
That shifting schedule sounds horrible. How does anyone (customers or employees) keep track of what day each neighborhood will have pickup?
It seems to me the sanitation workers just might want to be able to make it to same barbecues, pool parties, etc. that their friends and families are going to attend. It also might be that the line employees are not consulted on policy.
Greg, the city would send out a calendar (every six months, IIRC) with pickup days marked in red. I suppose they figured that printing and confusion are cheaper than overtime.
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”
What you have there is a failure to communicate. It’s individual from place to place, but some observations…
Much depends on the labor contracts in force where you work. Some pull in workers on holidays and pay the overtime. Keep in mind there are those who want to sit back at their holiday cookouts, toss back a few cool ones and bitch about their taxes.Ain’t no free lunch and no free sanitation!
Other places let crews complete routes as fast as they want–or require them to catch up for the missed day. This causes a lot of injuries from improper lifting, caustic materials spraying from garbage, etc. So the cost comes in human suffering and in work comp claims.
Whatever jurisdiction you live in should post the schedule and have a readily accessible number you can call to find out. That’s your basic right as a citizen. BUT I urge you to also find out how your municipality handles the issue. I work for medium sized muncipality, and a good one. They balance the need for service with a decent concern for workers. They realize that treating employees decently makes both monetary and morale sense. But it’s discouraging how often the “lower cost lunatic fringe” prevail because they’re loudest.
Sorry. Went on a rant there. But it’s a great question, and my (long-winded) suggestion is to ask questions and keep on asking until you get the answers!
My dad worked as a sanitation engineer (although he called it working as a garbage man) for a short while after he got out of the army in the late 40s. The only comment he ever passed on to his posterity was that he got a dollar a day and all he could eat!
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham
I’d be pleased as hell to have any trash service at all. Where I live, none is available. I can see from my house the trucks as they roll by, and the neat little cans being hoisted high into the air, but they won’t pick up our garbage. We had to buy an old junker truck to haul our garbage away, which means we also get the pleasure of visiting the county dump once a week.
Here is the thing. If a holidays falls during the week days, then the garbage truck drivers have to work on Saturday. All garbage routes that normally take place on or after the day of the week the holiday lands on are delayed by one day, which means Friday;s routes are delayed to Saturday.