Greyhound, the recidivist offenders of the waste management industry, are locked in a bitter dispute with their staff that has caused the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Protection, Richard Bruton, to launch a review of the sector.

In December of last year the two directors of Greyhound Recycling and Recovery, brothers Michael and Brian Buckley, both of Terenure, Dublin, avoided criminal convictions for failing to prevent emissions and odours coming from their main storage facility in Dublin.

They and their company were prosecuted by the Environmental Protection Agency for breaking waste regulations after the environmental watchdog detected a serious problem at the storage site at Crag Avenue, Clondalkin, Dublin, site of the current dispute.

The company, which took over Dublin City Council’s domestic bin collection service in January 2012, entered a guilty plea, but the brothers contested the charges. They were found guilty by Judge John O’Neill in the Dublin District Court but spared a conviction when the court heard convictions could affect their ability to travel to the United States where they had an office.

Also last year Greyhound was in court when it was alleged that five containers of waste of a type prohibited from export for recovery to China, India and Indonesia, were found at Dublin Port on January 13th and April 14th, 2010.

Dublin City Council brought the prosecution against Greyhound just a year after it had taken over the council’s domestic waste collection. The company has pleaded not guilty.

In 2012 an illegal stockpile of more than 1,000 tonnes of municipal waste was discovered on a Dublin farm by the Environmental Protection Agency. The waste was being stored there by Greyhound.

It was the third time that year that the company was found storing waste on farms in the greater Dublin area.

Pay cuts

Last month workers at the Greyhound facility at Crag Avenue learned on arrival at the plant that they were being asked to accept pay cuts of up to 35 per cent.

According to the workers, who are members of the Siptu trade union, when they refused to accept the pay cuts they were asked to leave the premises, and other people who were waiting nearby arrived to do the work.

Greyhound collects approximately 110,000 household bins in Dublin but, according to Michael Buckley, the service it is providing has improved since what the workers call the "lockout" began in June. A notice on the company's website tells customers in the Dublin City Council area that since the dispute began there has been a 25 per cent increase in "customer service provision" and route completions are above 99 per cent each day. "Vehicle breakdowns, using the same fleet, have reduced by 44 per cent."

Stands removed

According to one worker, who didn’t want to be named, part of the difficulty with the company has to do with the stands on the back of the refuse trucks, which he says were removed some time ago. The workers stand on the stands when the truck is travelling short distances between pickups.

Workers work five shifts a week, from 7am to 4.45pm, with two 15-minute breaks, he said. For safety regulations to be complied with, the trucks have to be emptied when they reach a certain tonnage, which is the equivalent of approximately 450 black bins, he said. If working in an area far from Clondalkin, an empty replacement truck will be sent out so the bin collection continues uninterrupted. The workers, he said, found it exhausting to be on their feet for so long, and productivity suffered.

The issue of productivity became a cause of dispute between the staff and management in the lead-up to Labour Relation Commission hearings that resulted in a recommendation that ways be found to improve the company’s profitability. The unilateral wage cut then followed.

The staff say drivers were asked to take a cut in net weekly pay to €400, from €580, and helpers to €313, from €450.

A feature of the Dublin domestic waste market since its privatisation has been the intense price competition between suppliers of the service.

Earlier this month Siptu general president Jack O’Connor wrote to Mr Bruton saying that aside from the terms and conditions issue, and health and safety concerns, a “race to the bottom” has created a “highly unstable situation”, with companies exhausting themselves financially.

The inevitable end result, he said, will be an “oligopolous market, to the detriment of citizens and public authorities alike”.

The Minister told the union leader he had asked the agencies under his department, which include the National Employment Rights Authority, the Health and Safety Authority, the National Consumer Agency and the Competition Authority, to draft reports for him on the operation of the sector.

“I shall be in a position to advise Government following a review of the reports of the agencies under my remit,” he said. The reports are expected to be completed within a fortnight.