August 17, 2010: The Union and Waste Management began bargaining this week on our two remaining open contracts, Recycle Northwest and Woodinville. The two contracts are almost identical, so we brought bargaining committee representatives in for both contracts at the same time.

These two groups get the benefit of the months of hard work put in by their brothers at the Sanitation table and the table for the two Eastmont contracts. Many gains in language achieved during those negotiations are being proposed and agreed to by both sides for these two contracts. Tim Crosby from Waste was unable to make it to the table this week due to a trial that conflicted with the scheduled dates. Rather than cancelling, we agreed to meet with the Company’s attorney and see what we could accomplish. We have tentatively agreed to many of the improvements achieved elsewhere. The remaining issues need to be discussed with Crosby, and we are in the process of finalizing a few additional dates. In two days of negotiations, we accomplished about six months worth of work and set the stage to quickly finish when we return to the table.

The members were represented at the table by Secretary-Treasurer Rick Hicks, Senior Business Agent Patty Warren, Vice President and Business Agent Ken Marshall, and Harv LeSure (shop steward from Woodinville) and Jeff Volland (shop steward from RNW).