Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Sanitation will agree to a new contract that includes a 17% raise, because it involves a special one-person truck that improve productivity. The DoS will agree to cut 200 jobs and enforce longer hours to pick up more of our stinky garbage. The Koch administration had reduced the number of workers on san trucks from three to two, and the NY Times says that the Bloomberg administration has wanted to "containerize" garbage pick up. Which means that bins full of garbage would just be rolled onto the truck and then dumped. Gothamist is fascinated with the Department of Sanitation because picking up the refuse millions of New Yorkers (not to mention the workers that come in for the day) create is a monster job; check out our entries on the DoS. And this Sunday is tech recycling day in Manhattan at Union Square - see what you can recycle!
Some other interesting things about the DoS raise and wages: The 17% raise is bigger than the teachers' recent 15% raise because the contract is longer; the starting salary for a DoS employee drops from $30,000 to $26,000, but after six months, there's a $3,000 raise ($26,000 is still more the starting pay for cops); working on the solo trucks could means a $16,000 bump in salary; there are extra incentives for "refuse and recycling workers to empty their trucks during their shift, instead of hauling their fully loaded trucks back to the garage and then taking them to a transfer station the next day."
