About 250 unionized Republic Services sanitation workers have demanded better working conditions in a month-long strike and recently rejected the waste hauler’s final offer.
"The truth is, they want to increase our pay by pennies," one of the leaders, Luis Carlos Saldaña, told Chula Vista Today.
"We perform one of the five most dangerous jobs in the world for reasons such as the pollution, transport because we start working so early and in the dark, which is why we have had run-over accidents,” he said.
Saldaña did not detail what the company's final offer consisted of but said it is "too little," compared to what some 180 sanitation workers in Chula Vista and another 70 in San Diego have requested.
He said that the striking workers are almost without exception heads of their families who have been impacted for a month without receiving income or having health services, among other benefits.
"Without an increase, inflation far exceeds us," he said. "We would like to return to work, but the company does not do its part."
Republic Services reported revenues of more than $972 million in the first three quarters of 2021, according to a Chula Vista Today inquiry.
Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas proposed Tuesday in a government session, among other solutions, that the city cancel its contract with Republic and find another company to carry out the work.
The mayor has verbally expressed her solidarity with the workers, but Saldaña said that if the city decides to terminate its agreement with Republic, "we are going to be left up in the air," since another company is not a guarantee that they will hire all of them.
But the city is also beginning to reach a limit. The company made a commitment to the mayor to regularize garbage collection starting this Monday, January 10, but in areas like Eastlake, garbage continued outside the homes on Wednesday.
"Here is the waste since Christmas, if it has not decomposed yet, it does not take long to do so, and then we are going to have a severe health problem," warned a Chula Vista resident.
