Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority workers fear for job security
Employees at the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority are worried about losing their jobs. The city council has suggested closing the Sun Street Transfer Center and Thursday employees came to the board meeting to speak out.
The workers have known for a while the city wanted to relocate but only recently learned about the city’s interest in shutting it down, and they say that’s kept them on edge.
“Right now, the morale’s really went down because everybody hears about the considerations going on,” said Jason Guillen, a household hazardous waste maintenance worker.
That was more than a week ago, when the Monterey Regional Waste Management District was giving a presentation at the November 7th city council meeting.
“So if Salinas were to decide to go to your facility you would be able to take all of our trash?” asked councilwoman, Gloria De La Rosa. The district said yes.
That was the first time employees learned about the possibility of the Sun Street Center closing. The city had been looking at relocating the facility to Sala road, but they’ve had some problems.
“Some of the land owners don’t want us over there and we’ve been told we might go into court, so we’re having difficulties,” said councilman Tony Barrera at the November 7th meeting.
The Monterey Regional Waste Management district’s site is in Marina but Sun Street Center employees say that’s too far for many in Salinas to get rid of trash.
“By us not being there what kind of impact is that going to be?” asked Guillen, “That many more people are going to be dumping on these back roads or in schools and business illegally.”
At the meeting Mayor Joe Gunter asked if some of the Sun Street workers could be given new jobs if the city went with the waste management district.
“Six to 10 positions just to fill out our current volume if other material were to come in the material recovery facility we process and we had to run a second shift, that would require a whole other staffing level,” said a representative with the Monterey Regional Waste Management District.
Right now the Sun Street Transfer Center employees are just trying to hope for the best.
“Try to find a solution to where we could obviously keep our jobs and keep our public happy and make the impact of everything go correctly,” Guillen said.
Thursday the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority board did meet to continue discussing buying the land on Sala Road. That meeting was held in closed session.
