1. Local Newspaper Accounts of the Strike

In the mid-twentieth century, sanitation work – garbage collection – was unpleasant, difficult, and dangerous. Even in the 21st century, it continues to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the US.

In much of the United States, the work was racialized. In Memphis, Tennessee, for example, where city leaders and police were predominantly Anglo/white, the city’s sanitation workers were mostly African American. After two workers there were crushed to death in 1968, more than a thousand went on strike, demanding union recognition and safer working conditions. The mayor called in the National Guard, framing what would become iconic photographs of Black workers, picketing with signs declaring “I AM A MAN,” amidst a background of tanks and soldiers. It was in support of this strike that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.

While the Memphis strike is the most well-known, sanitation workers elsewhere also fought for their dignity. In Texas, for example, there were garbage strikes in San Antonio (1967), Lubbock (1969), and Galveston (1972).

In 1969, Mexican American sanitation workers in Corpus Christi also went on strike, demanding better pay (they were paid minimum wage), classification as civil servants (the stability and benefits that other city employees enjoyed), and an end to abusive treatment from their supervisor.

City leaders initially agreed to the workers’ demands, and they returned to work. When those promises were not kept, however, they again walked off the job. This time, they were fired.

Among the workers' supporters was William Bonilla, a local attorney and a former state and national leader of LULAC.

A) “City Sanitation Strike End Awaits City Action: Concession Expected on Duncan,” Corpus Christi Caller Times, June 1, 1969

The city’s sanitation workers will be waiting tomorrow morning for official word that their demands have been met, ending the strike that began yesterday.

Sanitation workers and their families met last night at Knights of Columbus Hall, 3033 Ayers, with officers of United Congress of Mexican Americans (CUMA) officiating. The workers voted to wait for notice from the city council that Raymond Duncan, supervisor, will no longer work with them at the garbage collection yard, 2625 Greenwood.

William Bonilla, CUMA president, told the workers and their families that Marvin Townsend, city manager, has told him that if the workers returned to work tomorrow Duncan would not be present.

TALK WITH THE COUNCIL

Bonilla said Townsend had been talking with members of the city council yesterday on the sanitation workers’ demands.

The garbage collectors refused to work yesterday despite last-minute concessions made by Townsend to keep them on the job.

Townsend met with the garbage collectors at 7:30 a.m. yesterday in an attempt to prevent the work stoppage. He offered the workers a uniform, 44-hour week with a starting salary of $1.61 for the first 40 hours and time and a half for the last four hours. In the past some workers were hired on a temporary basis for $1.25 an hour.

CIVIL SERVICE STATUS

The sanitation workers were also put on civil service status, Townsend said.

The primary issue at present, Townsend said, is the workers’ complaints of the treatment they receive from their supervisor, Duncan.

The workers allege they are treated without dignity and respect and that they are addressed in a degrading manner by Duncan. According to them, Duncan threatened garbage collectors with dismissal if they voiced their grievances at City Hall. They appeared before the City Council last week despite the alleged threat.

SPECIFIC COMPLAINTS

Many of the 150 workers spnt yesterday afternoon giving specific complaints against Duncan after Townsend said no concrete complaints had been made.

Johnny Bilano, a spokesman for the sanitation workers, said they were not interested in Duncan’s being fired. They would be satisfied if he was transferred to another department.

Neither Townsend or Bilano would estimate how long the work stoppage would last.

‘GOOD WORK RECORD’

“In the past, the men have had a good work record. They serve almost everyone in the city and we have received very few complaints,” Townsend said.

The garbage collectors also visited the Thrift Tex store at 3102 Baldwin and the Biel Grocery at 21-1 Morgan yesterday morning and requested that the chain stores’ managements not purchase meat products from Sam Kane Wholesale Meat, Inc. during the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen strike against the firm.

Franklin T. Garcia, international representative of the Meat Cutters, said his union would attempt to supply financial and legal assistance to the garbage collectors.

Townsend said garbage could be dumped at the City’s two sanitary land fills at 5900 S. Stables and off Carbon Plant Road. Both will be open today.

B) Lynn Pentony, “City Dismisses All Trash Collectors: Council Meets to Deal with Second Walkout,” Corpus Christi Times, July 10, 1969

City garbage men went on strike after a mass meeting today and about 140 workers immediately were fired at the scene by City Manager Marvin Townsend for defying his ultimatum to board their trucks by 8:15.

Today’s sudden work-stoppage marked the city’s second garbage strike in 40 days. The new disagreement came during a stand-up outdoor meeting in which Townsend and other officials heard a repeat of grievances by garbage workers.

The City Council met later this morning in a special session to deal with the new garbage crisis.

Spokesmen for the group, including attorney William D. Bonilla, who is head of CUMA (Congress of United Mexican Americans), said the men were disgruntled because they didn’t feel the city has lived up to the terms of the agreement made June 3, when they requested city civil service status and aired other grievances before returning to work June 4.

Bonilla complained to Townsend that the workers apparently were not under civil service even now, although they had been promised that status. (The City Council passed an ordinance June 4 placing all city unclassified workers under civil service.)

Bonilla said the grievances were included in a letter which he said garbage department workers had asked him to write for them. He said he wrote the letter July 5 and it was placed in a mail pickup box on Morgan that day.

Townsend said he receive the letter yesterday.

Bonilla and other sanitation worker spokesmen told Townsend and city Public Works Director Jack McDaniel today that the city had agreed to remove Raymond Duncan from any supervision over the workers, but that Duncan ahs been coming to the yard “two or three times a day.”

(Removal of Duncan had been one of the major grievances prior to the earlier work stoppage).

Bonilla said that the workers still did not understand their pay checks and wanted a better way of having their straight pay and overtime pay itemized.

Bonilla asked Townsend if garbage workers would receive pay increases they had asked for in the same July 5 letter. Townsend said any pay raises would have to be considered along with the needs of other employees in other departments.

OTHER COMPLAINTS

Other complaints this morning voiced by the workers included:

-- Increase in their insurance premiums without benefits being explained to them by a qualified insurance man.

-- Improved restroom and dressing facilities.

-- Protest of city allowing back-door garbage pickups at additional fees but with more work for sanitation personnel.

The mass meeting this morning shortly after 7 a.m. had apparently been arranged after the city received a letter from the sanitation workers stating their renewed grievances.

STATEMENT REPORTED

A Spanish-language radio station (KUNO) reportedly carried a statement last night authorized by the sanitation workers and indicating they would not work today until they were satisfied that their demands will be met.

The talks outside the little frame sanitation office on Greenwood Drive brought no solution by 8 a.m. today, and City Manager Townsend told the workers that the trucks must begin operations in 15 minutes.

“At 8:15, the trucks must roll,” Townsend told the group. “Let me make this loud and clear, we want to solve every problem we can.”

GIVEN WARNING

However, he warned them that as municipal employees, they the right to work or quit but not the right to strike.

“Everyone not on the garbage trucks by 8:15 will be considered fired and all benefits—sick leave and so forth, will be off,” Townsend said.

He said it would be fine for the group to meet then and talk and make their decision.

At that point, Townsend, McDaniel, Charles Lummus, city personnel director, and garbage supervisory personnel set their watches at 8 a.m. and leaned on the fenders of city staff cars to await the decision.

ADDRESSED GROUP

The workers led by Bonilla moved across the street to an asphalt parking lot where Bonilla addressed the group in Spanish standing on the bed of a truck.

One man who had identified himself during the first strike as a member of CUMA led applause with a tambourine.

The group took a showing of hands of those who wanted to work today and those who didn’t. A cheer rang and the group disbanded and started back to the sanitation yard. One of the workers told a reporter they had decided not to go to work.

Bonilla led the group back under the tree by the sanitation building and the final confrontation began.

SAYS PROMISES UNKEPT

“The men say the promises you made on June 3 you have not given them,” Bonilla told Townsend. “You have given them 15 minutes to go to work, but they say, in fairness to their families, they will not go to work until they go to the (City) Civil Service Commission today or tomorrow and they tell them they are on Civil Service.”

Townsend and McDaniel asked the group if they realized the seriousness of what they are doing.

“You’ll lose everything,” McDaniel told them.

Someone mumbled, “I guess that’s the way it is.”

The men slowly left the yard and massed on the sidewalk across the street where they were being encouraged by a sprinkling of women—apparently wives of some of the workers.

SOMETHING IN WRITING

One of the workers’ leaders asked for something in writing showing they were fired.

“It will be marked on your final check,” Townsend told him.

“Turn in your uniforms as soon as you can,” McDaniel told the few remaining workers who were leaving.

A handful of workers remained for a few minutes, apparently trying to decide whether to join the majority or remain and go to work.

One supervisor told one the men still uncertain of what he would do, “Remember, you’ve just bought a house. These men are going to take break out of their families’ mouths.”

Members of the group across the street shouted in Spanish to the handful that remained, urging them to come over. They began to chant and someone said, “Get the coffee pot.”

SIGN ON TRUCK

A sign on a truck parked near the gate of the yard said, “We Want CUMA and Justice.”

Townsend got in his staff car and drove off after making a telephone call in the sanitation office. McDaniel remained on the scene talking to route supervisors standing by 40 big white, idle trucks.

No member of the City Council appeared at the sanitation yard this morning.

Bonilla, in a telephone interview said he has been requested by the garbage workers to be their spokesperson at tomorrow’s 3 p.m. civil service commission meeting at City Hall.

“In the event the commission takes the position it doesn’t want to talk to me because I am the president of CUMA, I will step aside, for I won’t let any technical detail stop me from aiding the sanitation workers. I am not going to be petty about this,” he said.

WATCHING SITUATION

The police Tactical Squad—which normally works at night—has been called and sent to watch the situation at the Sanitation Department headquarters.

Cmdr. N.C. Baumann, head of the Patrol Section, said police are now merely keeping an eye on things but necessary steps will be taken should the occasion arise.

SOURCES:

“City Sanitation Strike End Awaits City Action: Concession Expected on Duncan,” Corpus Christi Caller Times, June 1, 1969

Lynn Pentony, “City Dismisses All Trash Collectors: Council Meets to Deal with Second Walkout,” Corpus Christi Times, July 10, 1969