Tons Of Garbage Would 'Pile Up' On NYC Streets As Recycling 'Grinds To A Halt' After Strike

CITY HALL, NEW YORK CITY — Tons of garbage could "pile up" on New York City streets as recycling "grinds to a halt" following a strike at the city's largest processing facility, workers, union leaders and city officials said Tuesday.

Workers at Sims Municipal Recycling in Sunset Park — which processes 265,000 tons of trash per year — say the company isn't meeting their demands to form a union and have now threatened to walk off the job and stop service at the facility.

And the city's sanitation workers, unionized under the same organizations working with the Sims employees, would refuse to pick it up in solidarity with their fellow workers. (For coverage of the strike and other Sunset Park news, click here to subscribe to Patch's daily newsletter and free, real-time news alerts.)

“It could pile up anywhere," said George Miranda, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 210, which is organizing the union effort at the plant. "We don’t know.”

"The recycling in the city would grind to a halt," City Councilman Carlos Menchaca told Patch.

In an emailed statement, Sims said it has allowed workers to hold a secret election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, a vote which hasn't happened yet, and noted that workers at its other facilities in New York and New Jersey are unionized.

More than 70 percent of workers at Sims Municipal Recycling in Sunset Park have signed union cards, they said, but Sims management refuses to come to the table to negotiate, they said at a rally on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday morning.

"Not at all," Miranda said.

So workers have threatened to strike as they demand fair wages, better health benefits and more humane working conditions.

Workers at the rally said that colleagues have been fired for wearing other people's work pants, that they aren't allowed to speak in Spanish over the radio and that when workers are hurt on the job, some of them have to take an ambulance home because Sims doesn't provide transportation.

"It's sad that in New York City, as progressive as we are, that we're fighting for our livelihood constantly," Miranda, the union leader, said.

Sims' said that some claims made by the workers are being investigated by the company.

"SMR is confident the NLRB will find that it has done nothing wrong," the statement said. "SMR is firmly committed to safety, integrity, fairness and respect as core Company values and those values are fundamental to how SMR operates."

The New York City Council's Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management held a hearing Tuesday morning where Miranda and Sims workers made their case to city officials.

"In a matter of days, because Sims is the largest capacity facility of its kind for recyclables, in days, people across the entire city would feel the impact from a strike like this," Menchaca, whose district includes Sunset Park, said. "In a matter of days, people’s recyclables will not get picked up, and it will start piling up for all New Yorkers."

"Tight now, while we are trying to build a culture around recycling," Menchaca added, "this would be a huge setback."

Image via John Majors, Aerial & Architectural Photos of NJ, courtesy Sims Municipal Recycling