Garbage haulers who serve most of the communities in Snohomish County are prepared to strike if a new deal isn’t reached at midnight.
That’s when labor contracts expire for hundreds of workers in Snohomish and King counties.
Teamsters Local 174, the union representing workers, and officials from Waste Management Northwest and Allied Waste are pushing hard to come up with a deal both sides can agree on. Together, both companies pick up trash at 100,000 homes and businesses in Snohomish County.
“We are in a critical point in the negotiations,”Jackie Lang, spokeswoman for Waste Management, said this afternoon.
Another 150 recycling employees represented by Local 117 are also expected to honor the picket line, she said.
Talks stretched late into the evening Wednesday. Lang said her employer was “at the table with a sense of urgency today.”
The sticking point remains pay and benefits. Workers want a better compensation package. Health care premiums are rising, union officials said, and they don’t like proposals by the companies to cut wages to fund retirement benefits.
Company officials said they’ve been affected by the recession, too. They can’t afford what the union wants in a time when they’re trying to control costs.
“This is still all about economics,” Lang said. “We are too far apart on the compensation package.”
Waste Management serves customers in parts of unincorporated Snohomish County as well as Arlington, Marysville, Mill Creek, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Brier, Mukilteo and parts of south Everett.
Allied Waste covers Snohomish, Lake Stevens, Sultan, Index, Gold Bar, and parts of Lynnwood, Edmonds, Monroe and Woodway.
Another company, Rubatino, serves central and northern Everett and isn’t involved with the strike.
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