Workers Solidarity Movement

Following a succesful day of community action, blockading scab labour operated refuse trucks, in support of locked out Greyhound waste workers, the company sent a hilariously whiny email to customers. In the communication they blamed "certain political organisations" for orchestrating the blockade on social media and claimed the actions put the strike-breakers' health and safety under threat.

It's all the more bizarre given the fact that outrageous violations of health and safety have been logged by scab crews, who have been working outside of the allowable refuse collection times. 

We were perplexed, so we used google translate's new "bullshit to truth" setting, to see what Greyhound waste's email to their customers yesterday evening really meant. Here's what we got. - 



Dear Customer,



Unfortunately, there will be a delay in collections in your area today due to our continued mistreatment of our workforce, which for some reason unknown to us has not been accepted by some of your neighbours. Wehave incidents where our collection vehicles are being deliberately blocked by groups of people who seem to believe that we should treat our workers with respect and who seem to be annoyed that we have replaced our properly-paid workers with people that we can get away with paying minimum wage and providing with no health and safety training. 

This has been orchestrated by members of your community who care about decency, human rights and something that they call ‘solidarity’. They have even gone so far as to use facebook, texting and twitter to organise this ‘solidarity’ thing.

Due to the concern for our ability to continue to exploit the replacement crews we cannot collect your household waste safely at this time. The continued speaking to and picketing of our scab collection crews has resulted in some of them realising that taking someone else’s job is wrong. Others are realising that we should have given them safety training and Personal Protection Equipment before sending them out to work heavy machinery. We have had to stop collecting from your area today in order to defuse these notions.

This is unsafe and disruptive behaviour and we will not risk anyone being hurt. We know that if you and your neighbours see these blockades taking place, you will probably support them, and want to get involved yourself. But we have a wider responsibility for the ability of ourselves and the general business community to make our profits (although we do admit that we keep ours in the Isle of Man rather than spend them in Ireland). We are part of a drive to bring down wages and conditions in our industry and in the wider community and we have informed those that matter about this in an official capacity.

We realise this delays your waste from being collected and we apologise for this inconvenience to you and your families. However, this is out of our control and in the hands of the people with consciences and senses of solidarity involved.

You could be patient, or you could contact us on 1890 989 998 and tell us that you find our behaviour despicable.
Yours very insincerely
 

The Buckley Brothers 

For the record, we have included the email they actually sent, below:
 

Dear Customer,
Unfortunately, there will be a delay in collections in your area today due to continuous incidents where our collection vehicles are being deliberately blocked by groups of protesters and picketers that are standing in the middle of the road.
This has been orchestrated by members of certain political organisations through social media.

Due to the concern for the safety of our collection crews we cannot collect your household waste safely at this time. The continued harassment and abuse of our collection crews has resulted in us having to stop collecting from your area today in order to defuse the situation.

This is unsafe and disruptive behaviour and we will not risk anyone being hurt. We have a wider responsibility for the safety of our crews, you as a customer, and the general public. We have informed the local Gardaí and they will be dealing with this in an official capacity.

We realise this delays your waste from being collected and we apologise for this inconvenience to you and your families. However, this is out of our control and in the hands of the political organisations involved.

Please be patient, as soon as it is safe to return to the area we will collect your bins