The union representing close to a hundred Waste Management Authority employees filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the V.I. Public Employees Relations Board Tuesday, and a representative said a strike isn’t out of the question if the employees’ collective bargaining agreement doesn’t take effect soon.
Approximately 97 Waste Management employees are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. John Vigueras, IAM’s southern territory special representative, told the Source Tuesday that they’ve been waiting six years for a new contract and described the process as “excruciatingly slow and just cumbersome.”
“I’ve never, ever negotiated under these circumstances anywhere else in the states,” he said, referring to the V.I. Collective Bargaining Office as “an agency that negotiates with you but doesn’t have time to negotiate.”
IAM and other labor unions have repeatedly bemoaned the slow pace of negotiating new contracts with OCB, which is chronically understaffed and underfunded. The territory’s chief negotiator, Joss Springette, has advocated several times for Act 4440 to be amended or expanded in a way that would allow the government to offer general salary increases to employees awaiting new contracts.
The union’s frustration with OCB boiled over last summer, and Waste Management employees, dissatisfied with the contracts proposed by the authority at the time, voted to authorize a strike. Vigueras said Tuesday that he thought the matter was settled when they finally ratified a collective bargaining agreement in February, but the delays continued.
“I thought that once we signed and submitted it to them, and they signed, that the process would go through,” he said. “But they’re saying, ‘no, we have to have it signed by so-and-so and by so-and-so and the chairman of the board, and they’re not on island,’ and then we have to wait for them to get back … and the board doesn’t meet but once a month, and we missed the last one — just really incredible excuses.”
Eventually, Vigueras said the union squared everything with OCB.
“Once again, I thought — me being the ignorant person I am — I thought that was it …. We went to Waste Management, and the whole process started again,” he said. Vigueras said he was told that the WMA didn’t have a human resources information system and that the Authority had to do “all of the back pay calculations for 90 workers, plus their new salaries, by hand.”
“I’m like, I’ve never seen anything like this. So I had to give them an ultimatum,” he said. Vigueras said he reached out to the authority’s human resources department and executive director and promised to “go nuclear” if the contracts aren’t put into effect.
“And should they not take action within the next week or two, we’re going to reserve the right to … pull everybody out on an unfair labor practice strike,” he said. “Because where does this end? I mean, we’ve been very patient, and they just keep delaying it and kicking the can down and kicking the can down.”
Interim Waste Management Director Daryl Griffith acknowledged in a call with the Source Tuesday that the authority’s comptroller was out of office last week but said IAM will receive a response this week, adding that the holdup was caused by having to physically sign all of the required documents.
“We’re definitely in the home stretch,” he said. “We’re at third base, sliding in — running from third base, sliding into home right now. We’re seconds away from everything being fully executed and implemented.”
