Catherwood LibraryILR School

Seven hundred sanitation workers represented by Teamsters Local 396, planned to strike late this afternoon over wage increases at four garbage hauling companies servicing much of Orange County, California. At issue is the union's demand for a four-dollar raise next year and an overall pay increase of thirty-three and a-half percent over the next five years. While the workers have defended their demands by citing the wages of sanitation workers in San Francisco and Los Angeles which are over sixty-five percent higher than their own, the companies continue to point out the fact that their employees already make $42,000 a year.