Valley County Garbage Workers Strike

by I. B. Lyon

There have been rumblings in Valley County for a couples months now that the Valley County garbage workers were going to strike. Those rumors have come true. The county announced this Monday that the garbage workers had gone on strike. They are demanding higher wages.

I was able to have a phone conversation with Tony Trascherie, the Director of Valley County Solid Waste, yesterday. Trascherie said, “We’ve been underpaid and underappreciated for far too long. It’s time we take a stand. We’ve been warning the county for a while now, and we haven’t been taken seriously. We mean business! We chose the week of Christmas because we knew it would be the most impactful. Valleyans are going to have a ton of trash, and there’s not going to be anyone to pick it up.”

Word got out on social media and in the community that the garbage workers had gone on strike. Many people on the Let’s Talk Valley County Facebook group said they would just burn their trash, and that’s what they did. This caused another issue for the county. The 911 phone lines were inundated with calls about residents seeing smoke. People had no idea what was going on. Deputies began responding to calls, and after about 10 calls they stopped responding. None of the calls were emergencies; residents were just burning their trash.

911 dispatcher Billie Shatner said, “I thought this was some joke to begin with. I had no idea what was happening. I thought we had a huge forest fire or something. A colleague pulled up Facebook, and she saw all the people talking about the smoke and burning their trash. She told me what was going on, but we still had to respond to the calls. It was pretty darn stressful for a couple hours. I thought was I was going to lose my mind.”

Many Valley County residents had no idea what was going on. Some thought there was a forest fire, some thought the pipeline had exploded, and some thought it was the Apocalypse. One resident said, “I looked out my window and I saw smoke everywhere. I walked outside and looked around for a bit, and I thought this is it. This is the end I guess. The world is going to be destroyed by fire, and here it is. Revelation is playing out right in front of my eyes. I was in shock.”

Trascherie added, “I’m sorry about this unintended consequence of our strike. We in no way want to hinder the county’s ability to respond to emergencies. But, there’s an easy fix to the problem. Increase our pay! I hope the supervisors will call an emergency meeting next week to discuss our pay. We’ll strike for weeks if we need to.”

Valley residents hope the issue is resolved as soon as possible. We’ll see how the county leaders respond to the strike. The SRVO will keep you updated on the strike.