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Refuse collectors’ State Health Director Bruce Anderson says a stoppage -- or even a reduction -- in refuse collection on Oahu could result in more flies and other pests that carry or transmit diseases.
strike could pose
disease risk
The state health director
warns of many ailments
that are carried by pestsBy Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin"There would be an increased risk of transmission of diseases" carried by flies, including dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, salmonellosis, shigellosis, anthrax, trachoma, poliomyelitis, hepatitis and conjunctivitis, Anderson told the Hawaii Labor Relations Board yesterday.
The board is weighing Mayor Jeremy Harris' request to have refuse collectors and hundreds of other city employees declared "essential" and, thus, not allowed to take part in any strike.
The board declared an impasse in negotiations last month between the state, the four counties and United Public Workers Unit 1. That clears the way for the 1,716-member unit to strike as early as Dec. 27, provided it gives a 10-day notice.
Unit 1 includes those in refuse collection, wastewater treatment and disposal, emergency service vehicle repairs, parks and public buildings maintenance.
In all, the city wants 760 full-time workers in place during any strike, 51 standby (who must respond) and 36 on-call workers.
The union is seeking a four-year contract with no pay increases in the first two years and raises totaling 14.5 percent over the final two years. The state and counties initially offered a two-year contract with no pay increase.
But Gov. Ben Cayetano said yesterday he is hoping that a new offer, more in line with UPW's request, can avert a strike.
City Managing Director Ben Lee noted the city is vastly different than in 1979, when UPW struck for 43 days. Only 128 workers, 117 of them full-time, were deemed essential back then.
The city today has a number of federal environmental mandates that it is required to follow, Lee said.
But, UPW is fighting the city's agency-by-agency requests for exemptions and believes much of the slack can be picked up by supervisors not belonging to Unit 1.
The debate is particularly heated with regard to refuse collection. Lee told reporters the city wants 214 full-time refuse collectors on the job during the first day of a strike to maintain twice-a-week pickup for Oahu households.
But Anderson told the labor board that household refuse contains food and other organic waste that feed flies, rats and other vermin.
Flies, if left undisturbed, can double in three days, said Anderson, an epidemiologist. That's a key reason why the Health Department has opposed past city proposals to go to once-a-week garbage pickup, he said.
But UPW attorney Herbert Takahashi told the board that the Health Department did not issue citations to either the city or property owners when garbage was left sitting on curbs for more than a month after refuse collectors went on strike 21 years ago.
He suggested that during a strike, homeowners and business owners could take garbage to landfills and transfer stations. That's what is done routinely on the Big Island, where there is no collection offered by the county government.
"The UPW loses a very significant balance of power" if refuse collectors cannot strike, Takahashi said.
Oahu residents may be inconvenienced, UPW leader Gary Rodrigues said, but public safety would not be affected if Unit 1 went on strike.
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