Talks Monday between Orange County officials and the union representing waste and public workers employees were productive, fueling hope that a strike may at least be suspended for a few days, officials said.
“I think we’re going to start getting a brief break here,” Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Chaffee told City News Service on Monday. “We had mediation this morning.”
County officials are now working to schedule a special meeting for Thursday, which would lead the Teamsters Joint Council 42 to get back to work for three days, Chaffee said.
“We had mediation this morning and I can say the talks were very promising,” Teamsters spokesman Christian Castro said. “We hope the county can come back with an agreement that really values our workers, but it’s really on them at this point. We’re ready to make a deal when they are.”
Meanwhile, the county on Monday filed a complaint with the Public Employment Relations Board taking issue with picketing tactics at the county’s three landfills. The PERB complaint also notes that the union’s strike notice deprived the county time to “implement its contingency plans.”
The Teamsters did not have an immediate comment on the complaint because union leaders had not yet had a chance to read it.
The main issue with the picketing was the blocking of traffic in and out of the landfills, according to the complaint, which alleges that union workers falsely told customers one of the landfills was closed.
The complaint also alleges that at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday, “a picketer, who was not working at the time, was standing or walking in the center of the lane when his right foot was run over by the driver’s side tire by a public self-haul customer.” Within the next hour, “another picketer’s foot was run over by a public self-haul customer” in Brea, according to the complaint.
“The incidents illustrate the serious and ongoing safety hazard created by picketers standing or walking in the traffic lanes at the landfill entrances,” the complaint alleges.
The Teamsters Local 952 represents employees in OC Public Works, OC Waste & Recycling, OC Community Resources, among other agencies. The strike is affecting road and flood channel maintenance, landfill operations, parks and beach maintenance, and repairs to county and first-responder vehicles.
All of the county’s cities with their own waste-hauling contracted services rely on the county’s landfills for dumping.
“They may be about out of space” in the cities’ temporary holding sites, Chaffee said.
He added that the county has “made a last, best and final offer … and it was a pretty big bump from where we were before they went out on strike last Tuesday.”