City employees try to beat out private contracters for recyling work

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Updated: November 20, 2011 8:41AM

Thanks to routing changes and perfect attendance, city employees are holding their own against private contractors in the high-stakes competition for the right to collect Chicago’s household recycling.

City crews were apparently so efficient coming out of the gate that they started the first week of the competition with 22 trucks but needed just six by Friday. That freed 16 trucks for routine garbage collection.

Week 2 of the six-month competition was a near-repeat: City crews started off with 22 trucks and needed only eight by Friday, allowing14 trucks to be shifted to picking up regular garbage.

Routing and other logistical changes — like beginning and ending the day at the parking station instead of the ward yard — have helped. But so has a zero rate of absenteeism in a Department of Streets and Sanitation.

With their jobs on the line, not a single laborer or truck driver has called in sick.

Lou Phillips, business manager of Laborers Local 1001, said he’s more confident than ever that city employees will win the competition against a pair of private contractors — Waste Management and Sims Metal Management.

“We’re doing it smarter,” Phillips said. “They get in the truck together and go directly to an alley and start working, instead of a driver going 15 or 20 minutes to a ward yard and another five to 15 minutes to an alley.”

At a meeting last week with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Week 1 showed a “different mindset, different attitude” among city employees.

“City workers came in hours early on Thursday,” Emanuel said. “They said, ‘We want to win this.’ Anybody ever heard that before? They said, ‘We’ve got extra time. What else do you need?’ ”

Emanuel noted that Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Tom Byrne “was gonna send `em out with four trucks, and they said, `No, no, no. We only need two’ because they didn’t want to add cost…. Competition is truly changing people.”

Earlier this year, an independent arbitrator questioned how private contractors “could realistically expect to produce the same level of service” with one-employee crews working 28 routes, compared to 45 routes with two-employee crews currently used by the city.

On Monday, Waste Management spokesman Bill Plunkett said some of his company’s trucks are using two drivers, while other trucks with a driver working solo have a supervisor trailing behind in a pickup truck.

“When you have an undertaking of this size and scope serving a major city with literally thousands of collection stops, there’s a learning curve,” Plunkett said, noting that the contract carries a fixed price.

“The extra driver you see is in training to learn the routes and also to help out,” he said. “As drivers become completely familiar with their route, we’ll adjust accordingly and have just one driver. But right now, our focus is make sure the work gets done.”

As for complaints that Waste Management crews are bypassing recycling carts improperly positioned or behind locked gates, Plunkett said, “Where we don’t have access to containers, we’re leaving door hangers reminding residents of their date of pickup.”

Tom Outerbridge, general manager of the recycling division of Sims Metal Management, said his company is also using “pretty much all two-man trucks.”

“The one-man concept relies on automated collection steps, but automation has limitations,” Outerbridge said. “The way bins are placed in alleys may or may not always allow a one-man truck to work.”

As for complaints that Waste Management crews are bypassing recycling carts improperly positioned or behind locked gates, Plunkett said, “Where we don’t have access to containers, we’ll be leaving stickers advising residents we can’t get at them.”

Last week, Emanuel unveiled a proposed 2012 city budget that calls for managed competition to spread from household recycling to: vehicle-booting and towing; tree-trimming; street marking; curb and gutter repair.

The mayor’s budget would also make the controversial switch from a ward-by-ward to a grid system. That will set the stage for a similar, higher stakes competition for routine garbage.