Roll-up Driver at Allied Waste, Lawrenceville, Georgia

We had a lot of support when we were initially organizing in 2004, then the company started its anti-union campaign.

A few drivers were fired. We had a “zero tolerance” policy in place, which meant that if a driver has an accident that the company considers to have been preventable, the driver can be fired. This policy was in place before we started organizing but it hadn’t been enforced. There were probably five employees who lost their jobs this way. There were a couple drivers who had perfect driving records then had accidents and the company fired them. Most of the people fired were union supporters.

Meanwhile, the company was trying to separate a few drivers that they felt had influence on the rest of us. They told them that if a union came in, all drivers were going to lose money. They said that we were going to be throwing away our dues money since a union couldn’t make the company do what it didn’t want to do. They said that any necessary changes could be done without a union.

Of course that wasn’t true. Allied had increased our hours while our wages had stayed the same. We voted to become Teamsters in April ’04. The company didn’t want to recognize us, and we wound up fighting for a year and a half to make them realize that we were Teamsters.

Finally fellow Teamsters in Georgia threatened to strike if we weren’t recognized. The company finally recognized us and we got our first contract in December ’05. We ratified our second contract this January.

Since we’ve had a contract the company has cut back drastically on its favoritism. We got rid of the “zero tolerance” policy and replaced it with progressive discipline. They are big improvements.