(OHIO) Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and the union representing the city's garbage workers are involved in a tense and protracted contract negotiation. Teamsters Local 20 has vowed to strike unless workers receive a contract offer that mirrors the generous wage package granted to the city's largest union last year. Finkbeiner, who has fought with the city's unions since he took office in 1994, has spoken openly about the idea of hiring a private firm to provide hauling services.

Finkbeiner said his administration must take bold steps to stem wasteful practices in the city's solid waste division. He points to the city's policy of paying built-in overtime to garbage workers, although the average work day is 4.51 hours for garbage collectors and 5.26 hours for drivers.

Toledo's refuse employees work on an incentive system that allows them to end their work shift whenever they finish their routes.

Despite the short shifts, garbage truck drivers earn 3 1/2 hours of overtime weekly to compensate them for the time it takes to drive to the city's landfill and back to the city's garage.

Toledo officials complain that the union's "actual" pay rate works out to $26.24 per hour for truck drivers and $23.95 per hour for waste collectors when the laborers' shortened work days are considered. At that rate, city officials say, Toledo's garbage truck drivers' and garbage collectors' hourly earnings are more than police officers and firefighters.

But union officials said the comparison of garbage laborers' salaries with police officers and firefighters is unfair. They emphasize that the city has not proposed changes to the structure of the "incentive" work system.

Toledo's contract with garbage workers expired Jan. 1. Since then, both sides have clashed over work rules and wages. The discussions became so heated earlier this year that both sides took a four-week cooling-off period before they returned to the bargaining table.

The union believes it should be rewarded for adopting a number of cost-saving and service-enhancing measures, including:

-Allowing the city to cut six positions that had been held by former employees who have been on long-term workers' compensation leave.

-Allowing the city to add a collector to a two-man crew that has in the past picked up garbage from downtown buildings and a small neighborhood route. The move will enable the city to give the crew a larger route.

-Agreeing to contract language that forces collectors to give homeowners three warnings about improperly bundled garbage before collectors stop taking a home's waste.

Recently, the city offered what it called its "final" contract proposal for Teamsters Local 20: a 7 percent wage hike over two years, plus a 1 percent contribution to the workers' pension plan. The union angrily and unanimously rejected the offer. Union members have said they will vote down any package that does not mirror the 9 percent wage increase and 6.9 percent pension payment package given last year in a three-year pact with the city's largest union, Local 7 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

City officials argue that the city cannot afford to pay the union more than it has offered. And they say they need to cut the division's overtime costs to make the division more efficient. The city spent $422,000 on overtime last year. One way officials would like to cut that cost is by restructuring the city's holiday pickup schedule.

On the same day that the union rejected the city's proposal, the Finkbeiner administration announced that a preliminary analysis of private-firm bids for the city's garbage collection showed that Toledo could save $1 million a year by switching the service.

A 1995 report from the Municipal Waste Management Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors showed that many cities are rethinking trash collection. Only 39 percent of 255 American cities surveyed still use municipal crews only for residential garbage collection. The figure is down from 44 percent in 1993.

Toledo received bids from three companies for the city's trash collection--Browning-Ferris Industries, Waste Management of Ohio Inc., and City Management Corp.

For more information, contact the office of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, (419) 245-1001.