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Republic Waste Drivers Vote Teamsters
u(ATLANTA) – Republic Waste drivers in McDonough, Ga., voted 24-14 to join Teamsters Local 728 on Friday after a hard-fought campaign.
‘This is a great victory for our union,” said Local 728 President Randy Brown. “It adds another unit to an existing group of Republic workers in the Atlanta area. It goes to show, yet again, that we can organize waste workers in the South.”
The organizing victory marked the seventh National Labor Relations Board election won by Teamsters Local 728 this year, including two at Republic.
The drivers were frustrated by wage cuts, intimidation, heavy workloads and management’s indifference to their problems.
“They piled more work on us. If you didn’t have 358 stops in one day, they took the helper off,” said Renard Henley, a Republic driver. “You’ve got a lot of people, after three years their body has broken down.”
“We deal with a lot of intimidation on the job. If you complain about anything, the first thing they tell you is ‘There’s the door if you don’t like that.’ We didn’t need to hear that. We’ve got a family just like they do,” Henley said.
Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.Teamster.org or follow us on Twitter @TeamsterPower.