City, union officials working to restore timely trash pickup

City and union officials assured the public Thursday that garbage collection workers will do their best to pick up trash on time this holiday season and avoid a repeat of last month, when rubbish sat uncollected longer than expected in East Oahu and Pearl City.

The promises came after a meeting between the United Public Workers and the city over concerns about the city’s load limit for garbage trucks, which forced some workers to leave trash bins uncollected while they took take extra time for more trips to the dump.

Dayton Nakanelua, state director of United Public Workers, which represents refuse workers, said the meeting resulted in an assurance that “core services that are so necessary on a daily basis gets provided.”

At a joint news conference with the city, Nakanelua said, “We will do our best, both from a management perspective and the working men and women, that these issues of delays will be at a minimum. The goal is customer satisfaction.”

The rubbish troubles began at the beginning of November when pickups were delayed for about a week in an area spanning from Hawaii Kai to Aliamanu. Garbage collection was delayed again last week in Aiea and Pearl City, leaving food waste from Thanksgiving meals festering in trash bins.

The delays affected routes where plastic curbside bins are emptied into side-loading garbage trucks; routes where rubbish is dumped into the back of trucks were unaffected.

Tim Houghton, deputy director of the city Department of Environmental Services, said workers caught up on all the routes Tuesday.

Nakanelua said the problems stemmed from staff shortages and the city’s enforcement of a weight limit of 8.99 tons per load on side-loading garbage trucks. Some trucks have transported more than the limit, officials said.

The officials said the department is short 20 to 25 refuse collection workers — about 25 percent of the current workforce — and hope many of those vacancies will be filled by early next year.

Besides staffing shortages, refuse collectors are seeing more trash to be collected, and the workload is wearing down employees who pick up additional routes to get the job done, Houghton said.

“It’s amazing how two or three people short in a yard can make a very quick difference,” Houghton said. “It’s not easy work.”

He said the weight limit actually has been in effect since 2010, but the city began reminding refuse workers in early November to follow those standards, which are based on federal law.

Houghton said weight was a factor when a city garbage truck tipped over in October on the H-1 freeway near the Campbell Industrial Park offramp.

He said the city also has tools to prevent delays, such as an option for workers to call for a second truck if they are late.

Nakanelua said the city’s emphasis on the weight limit initially created alarm for some workers, but the union supports the limits from the standpoint of public and employee safety.

Nakanelua said during the meeting the parties discussed a city mentoring program that would provide training to trash collectors to work efficiently within the load limits, as well as maps of new, efficient routes, along with 10 additional routes that may be added next year.

Officials hope to have the new routes in operation by early next year.

Nakanelua rejected the notion that workers intentionally slowed down work to protest the weight limits.

“It’s just the combination of the different factors that have been expressed that caused this delay in certain routes,” he said, adding that after the meeting, union members left with “a recommitment of doing the best that we can on a daily basis to ensure that the public gets the service that has been scheduled for them.”