Rubbish is piling up on Sydney streets and attracting vermin because of a protracted industrial dispute that City of Sydney councillors claim is harming the city’s reputation.
Councillors say the ongoing waste collection woes are the number one gripe of residents, and have demanded Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore resolve the dispute between the council’s household rubbish contractor and its workers.
Inner-city residents are frustrated by ongoing problems with waste collection in the City of Sydney.Credit: Scott Mackay
Labor councillor Linda Scott said the “Lord Mayor’s rubbish debacle” was becoming an embarrassment and threatened to overshadow Sydney’s World Cup events.
“Residents and visitors shouldn’t have to wade through uncollected rubbish to celebrate soccer success in our streets,” she said.
Sydney CBD resident Shane Kruger said missed and delayed waste collections meant mounds of rubbish piled up in his apartment building’s loading dock.
“The smell, oh my God, is a human hazard,” he said. “It’s absolutely disastrous.”
A protracted industrial dispute has disrupted household waste collection in the City of Sydney.Credit: Scott Mackay
Kruger said a nearby park was often in a disgusting state with bins overflowing with rubbish – especially after major events such as Vivid and Bastille Day.
“I don’t mind a festival, but the council needs to get its shit together and pick up rubbish after these events,” he said.
Potts Point resident Scott Mackay said there was a long-standing problem with overflowing rubbish bins and street trash in the suburb.
“This has been reported a number of occasions to council and nothing ever happens,” he said. “Yes, the rubbish eventually gets cleaned up but not after plaguing the street for days.”
Mackay said some buildings did not have adequate bins for the rubbish they generated.
“This results in their bins being regularly grossly overstuffed with bags and trash littering the ground and blowing down the street and footpaths,” he said.
Other property owners failed to remove bins from the street, Mackay said. “They thus don’t care if their bins become overstuffed, smelly, fly, bird and rodent attracting because they are outside their buildings.”
Waste workers have been in an industrial dispute with the council’s domestic waste contractor Cleanaway over pay and conditions for months, with members of the Transport Workers Union striking for the sixth time earlier this month.
The union’s state secretary Richard Olsen called for the council to intervene in the dispute in a letter to councillors this month.
Liberal councillor Lyndon Gannon said he received daily complaints about missed waste collections and rubbish piling up.
“Enterprise bargaining has been ongoing for eight months, and we are getting nowhere,” he said.
A Cleanaway spokesman said the company believed it had offered a new enterprise agreement that was fair, reasonable and more favourable for employees: “While the negotiations have been protracted and unfortunately impacted residents, we are hopeful of a speedy resolution.”
A City of Sydney spokesman said the ongoing industrial action was periodically impacting household waste collection for some residents.
“This industrial action creates some delays, particularly in the collection of illegal dumps and booked bulky waste and metal/whitegood collections,” he said.
He said the council was working with Cleanaway to minimise disruption to residents, but was not involved in negotiation over pay and conditions.
Independent councillor Yvonne Weldon said she had received countless calls from residents who are regularly experiencing delayed and missed collections.
“You shouldn’t have to contact your local councillor to get your bins collected, but when these residents report these issues through the council hotline their reports are falling on deaf ears,” she said.
Weldon said the council’s waste service has been “failing the community for quite some time now”.
“If Cleanaway cannot deliver consistent services, council need to allocate more in-house resources to ensure waste management meets community expectations,” she said.
Liberal councillor Lyndon Gannon said he received daily complaints about missed waste collections and rubbish piling up.
“I’ve had people scream down the phone at me saying ‘I don’t care whose contractor it is. Get down here and pick it up yourself’,” he said.
Gannon said council staff were working overtime to collect the bins that should have been collected by waste workers.
“It’s not good enough, and it has a flow on effect – they’re always playing catchup when there is strike action,” he said. “Lucky it’s winter and the bins aren’t stinking up the city.”
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