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Rahm Tells Chicago Garbage Workers: Get back to work! Your bad apples are bringing out the rats…

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  September 27th, 2011 at 10:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Chicago has a rat problem. The furry kind that, according to a CBS Chicago report last year, dwell in the most densely populated areas of the Windy City. And, the worst part? Even though they’re from Asia, they’re called Norway rats.

They prefer fresh food, but will eat many things such as pet food, dog feces, garbage and plants. If food is scarce, the strongest rats may even eat the weakest and young.

See? They are nasty, don’t you think?

For awhile now, Chicago’s new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has had to balance budget issues by reassigning city workers from the rat patrol to garbage duty. Back in March, this led the Laborers union to criticize the city’s reassignments saying moving people from the Rat Patrol would lead to a bigger rat problem.

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.



Mayor Rahm, however, begs to differ and, on Tuesday he further upped the ante by accusing the garbage collectors’ of chronic absenteeism. Specifically, Emanuel cited their calling out ‘sick’ on Mondays and Fridays.

In a press release issued by the mayor’s office, Emanuel said the absenteeism charts would be updated monthly to “increase accountability and enhance services” for Chicago taxpayers.

“Chronic absenteeism forces us to reduce tree trimming and rodent control in order to perform garbage collection,” he said.

“As the city faces unprecedented financial challenges, I am committed to protecting the taxpayers and spending every dollar with the absolute certainty that we are providing residents with the services they depend on at the lowest possible cost.”

The Mayor’s office released these charts to prove his point.

Average Unscheduled Absences by Day of Week for Refuse Truck Drivers

This metric shows the average number of unscheduled absences taken by refuse truck drivers on any given day of the week. Numbers were calculated from data collected from August 2010 to August 2011.

Bureau of Sanitation – Average Unscheduled Absences by Day of Week for Refuse Truck Drivers

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Bureau of Sanitation – Average Unscheduled Absences by Day of Week for Refuse Collectors

This metric shows the average number of unscheduled absences taken by refuse collectors on any given day of the week. Numbers were calculated from data collected from August 2010 to August 201

Bureau of Sanitation – Average Unscheduled Absences by Day of Week for Refuse Collectors

Powered by Socrata

Lou Phillips, the union boss at Laborers’ Local 1001 was quick to point out:

Lou Phillips, business manager of Laborers Union Local 1001, said the records released Tuesday underscore his argument that the city’s long-standing claim of a 33 percent daily absenteeism rate was exaggerated by lumping together employees who call in sick with those on duty disability and restricted duty.

“These people are the best laborers in the world. Are there bad apples in every bunch? Yes. But, I state at my meeting every month, `You have to come to work.’ I tell them every month that absenteeism is not acceptable, but it does happen,” Phillips said.

The garbage collectors need to tread carefully here. While Rahm Emanuel is no Scott Walker when it comes to government unions, he allegedly has a mean temper and apparently enjoys mailing his enemies dead fish.

_________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com.

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COMMENTS

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  • DerKrieger

    …as many government services as possible and use the savings to reduce city taxes to draw more businesses. Will bust the unions as an added benefit.

    Will never happen.

    • acat

      put a bounty on rats. Kill ‘em, turn in the corpses, collect the bounty.

      Guessing this has been shut off, don’t know for sure.

      Mew

    • jasonva

      it pains me to say that this would not be productive (at least as regards garbage removal) in Chicago’s current cultural climate. Huge portions of the city have a third-world mentality toward garbage (to be blunt, these are both the populations actually from the third world – largely hispanics, and the sub-culture composed of the part of the black population that has been destroyed by the welfare system). If it were the responsibility of the residents to pay for removal, they would not. Whole neighborhoods would effectively become landfills.

      Entirely agree that it’s a moot point, though – privatization will never happen.

      • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

        As per the rules effecting the “commons”, it is perfectly all right by some libertarian arguments to require certain things for public safety, collect the money through taxes or mandatory fees and then contract them out to private industry.

        Of course this is problematic in a place like Chicago because of the corruption.

        • jasonva

          that was interrupted by a neuroscience lecture. When a city’s political culture has the right mix of competence and uprightness, that approach to privatization can make things vastly more efficient, affording much better use of taxpayer funds. Chicago, as you point out, is the textbook example of how this can, if possible, make matters worse. I moved to Daleystan during the “Hired Truck Program” aftermath. On a side note, that debacle offers quite the interesting look into the environment in which our beloved president cut his political teeth.

        • wennejunk

          “…providing residents with the services they depend on at the lowest possible cost.”

          Holy crap batman.

          That’s a start. Of course unsaid is the rest of the sentence:

          “..without actually going away from public union labor services,”

          Which would then fulfill the first part of the sentence.

      • sbm1

        It means that sanitation is not owned by the city,a dn sanitation workers are not public employees. It means 5 or 6 sanitation companies, perhaps some unionized, perhaps some not, put in bids for either the whole task of picking up and disposing sanitation for the whole city, or parts of that task, or parts fo the city or whatever….probably based on a per bin basis…..

        It could be up for bid ever 3 or 4 years, with proper contracts, and penalties and the like.

        There have to be cities doing this already, because even in Germany, most cities have farmed this out to private companies, and I have never seen anything resembling a strike ever.

        • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

          Here in Fort Collins we have 4 companies to choose from. Anyone, anywhere in the city can choose whichever company they want to service them. I see no need for a government-induced monopoly for this service.

          • sbm1

            I would love the idea of 4 competing people being feasible, and apparently it is in Fort Collins. But on a practical side, what happens if you have a neighbour, or perhaps an entire neighbourhood that either doesn’t choose one, or doesn’t pay for one at all? Do they just have a giant garbage pile in fornt of their house…or push their bin in front of your house.

            For general sanitation there is a bit of a necessity that everyone actualyl buy one…sort of like car insurance in states that mandate it.

          • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

            You cannot go without trash service.

  • Tbone

    and paid for? Talk about ingratitude.

    • acat

      it’s quite possible that the “bought and paid for”, or “knowing where the bodies are buried” flows both ways between Rahm and Obama.

      Mew

  • ss396

    At least he’s trying to balance the budget – two words that Obama has never heard of, much less used in the same sentence. Still, this has to be a lot more fun for Rahm than working for that pompous ass back east ever was.

  • Flagstaff

    Should they cut off the rats’ source of food, or just kill ‘em with poison?

    The folks who think that the solution to the illegal immigration problem is to make sure their high school graduate kids (of whom we can use more, graduates that is) don’t receive in-state tuition rates (even though they have lived in the state for at least three years) are the equivalent to the “cut off their food” approach.

    Those who want to control our borders are equivalent to the “poison the buggers” crowd.

    The first approach makes it harder for the rats to survive, but not impossible; the second eliminates them from the equation.

    No wonder the Democrats in Chicago are arguing about which way to go.

    Not that I’m advocating poison bait stations under the border fence, mind you.

    • Raven

      Cut off the food supply to encourage those here to leave
      And
      Build the wall to keep out those not already here.

      Either/or just leaves the job incomplete.

  • FlyingTigress

    “Even though they

  • Mike Ferguson

    (NT)