Mr. Camarillo’s death, while seemingly a freak accident, was in fact not unusual. The hazards facing people in this line of work have a long history — they inspired the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike of 1968. That walkout was set off in part by the deaths of two Memphis sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who were crushed to death by the hydraulic press of the truck they were riding on one rainy winter evening.
The strike, whose organizers demanded higher pay, the recognition of the workers’ union and safer working conditions, is often associated with the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis the day after delivering his “Mountaintop” speech in support of striking sanitation workers. But when we think about the strike, we should also remember that half a century after his death, the work Dr. King was focused on in the last days of his life remains unfinished. A ProPublica investigation published in January detailed the grueling and unsafe working conditions faced by many of today’s private waste-management workers, who risk their lives daily for very little pay.
The investigation focused on New York City, but the conditions it uncovered aren’t at all unlike those in Memphis in 1968. There, the mostly African-American men who handled garbage did work that was dangerous, brutal and poorly paid. Aside from the hazards the trucks posed, sanitation workers had to handle materials like tree limbs, broken glass and biological waste that could infect, poison or otherwise injure them. They endured this in temperatures regularly exceeding 90 degrees, often without breaks. Crippling injuries were common.
The strike against those conditions quickly became a national focal point for labor activism and civil rights. For Memphis’s churches and N.A.A.C.P. chapter, drawing attention to the treatment of African-American sanitation workers was a vehicle to address the ills of segregation. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees saw the strike as an opportunity to organize workers in a city that had resisted unionization. For Dr. King, it was aligned with the aims of the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocated economic opportunity as crucial to the realization of civil rights.
In the speech delivered the night before his death, Dr. King declared: “The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” While a deal was reached in Memphis after his death — recognizing the workers’ union and guaranteeing better wages — many workers across the country still face unacceptable conditions.
Nationwide, sanitation and recycling work remains more dangerous than policing or firefighting; in 2016, only loggers, fishermen, airplane pilots and roofers suffered a higher rate of job-related fatalities in the United States than did waste workers.
In New York City, conditions are especially difficult for employees of the private waste haulers who collect trash from the city’s businesses each night. While workers employed by the Department of Sanitation — which collects residential trash — are unionized and offered health care, pensions and a median base pay of $69,000, those who work for private companies are paid as little as $80 a shift, with no overtime or health or retirement benefits, ProPublica reported. This means it’s common for the nonunion employees of private companies — 60 percent of whom are members of racial minority groups — to earn less than $35,000 annually.
In 2016, over 80 percent of waste-work deaths nationwide occurred in the private sector. And in New York City over all, municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a death since 2014, but private trucks killed seven people in 2017 alone. When ProPublica interviewed workers from five of New York City’s private haulers, 71 percent reported having been injured on the job, 93 percent reported that their employer provided no health and safety training, and 62 percent said that their work vehicles were sometimes unsafe. Some said they hesitated to complain about the conditions, worrying that their employers would simply assign them fewer shifts if they did so.
To read the full story, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/opinion/sanitation-workers-deaths-unions.html.