So many things are wrong with the city’s bulky-item trash pickup program that it’s tempting to conclude: Just dump it.
After all, service has been plagued by inefficiency and delays, evidenced by the piles sitting on sidewalks too long after scheduled monthly pickup dates. Adding to the insult: Taxpayers are being burned by program workers’ abuse of sick leave, excessive overtime and unpaid days off.
Still. There is value to, and expectation of, convenient disposal of bulky, outdated household items — if it can be managed well and efficiently.
That’s why it’s imperative for the city Department of Environmental Services’ (ENV) Refuse Collection Branch to fix its bulky-trash program, which a scathing new city auditor’s report revealed to be rife with problems. Among the findings:
>> Excessive sick leave and leave without pay. From July 2015 to July 2016, 102 of 122 manual-pickup workers took 17,815 hours, or 2,227 days, of sick leave. And from July 2015 to April 2017, 21 employees took over 3,900 hours of leave without pay (LWOP) after running out of paid leave; the most LWOP taken by one worker was 142 days — that’s more than one-third of a year off the job.
>> Excessive overtime pay. In the 13 months starting July 2015, 153 workers reaped $1.7 million in overtime for bulky and large-appliance pickup, an average of $11,056 per employee. The most OT paid to one worker was $75,570 — that staffer and four others at the Pearl City refuse yard comprised half of the top 10 overtime earners; also, the two employees taking the most sick leave and the most LWOP work at that yard.
Clearly, more investigation into the Pearl City operations is warranted.
>> The majority of bulky-item loads taken to collection yards were not maximized. That means more items could have, should have, been collected on daily routes, but were not; this ineffiency occurred in the majority of loads collected at six of the seven collection yards.
At the core of the inefficiencies is a memorandum of agreement with the United Public Workers union — counterproductive work rules that are so rigid they willfully create daily challenges for collection yard supervisors on staffing and scheduling of bulky item collection crews.
It comes to this: In order to reconcile this wasteful program, UPW workers must be willing and be made to help fix it. Clearly, such rampant slackness does not occur in isolation; colleagues and managers are complicit. The mayor and department leaders need to impress stricter supervision and disciplinary actions.
Immediate steps are needed to improve timely bulky-item pickup, reduce complaints from residents, and reduce overtime costs. Key among these, as outlined by the audit:
>> Negotiate updated agreements with the UPW to develop more flexible work rules, and develop more flexible crews to enable bulky item pickups within the regular 8-hour work day.
>> Reduce sick leave abuses by monitoring employees with patterns of absences and firmly taking disciplinary action for abuses.
>> Reduce overtime by maximizing the daily number of bulky and large-appliance routes that are completed on regular time.
>> Maximize loads collected, and improve efficiency of pickups by redrawing boundaries to balance out busy and less-busy areas.
For the consumer, there also is responsibiity. The audit found residents not paying enough attention to whether items are eligible for bulky-item pickup (see restrictions at opala.org). The city ENV agency, too, was chided for lacking proactive education on this for users.
Though the audit noted staffing shortages, it’s doubtful that merely adding more workers would bring much improvement. The current system of operations is so severely flawed that adding employees without first bettering operations and fixing work rules would be throwing good money after bad.
Few things contribute to a city’s diminished pride and tarnished image than filth cluttering streets. Yes, homeless encampments abound, but complex socio-economic factors underlie that problem, confounding quick fixes. No such factors mire the bulky-item pickup program — other than shameful ineffiencies and abuse of work time. The audit was just the first step; now comes the tough but necessary task of overhaul.
