This website was made by disgruntled Saubermacher employees who for years have tried and failed to form a Betriebsrat. Despite the willingness on behalf of employees, the industry’s critical importance for the environment and the Trade Unions constantly asking for better working conditions – it all managed to fall on deaf years. At some point, it became obvious that without pressure from the Öffentlichkeit, these attempts will continue to fail.
Saubermacher is the leading private waste management company with its fingers deep in every aspect of the waste economy. Its political and economic might allowed it to be a company boasting of more than 3800 employees worldwide with only one known unionized workplace – the PPP between Saubermacher and Stadt Villach (a fact largely unknown for 90% of Saubermacher employees). The shadowy nature of the waste economy and the confusing ownership structures make the average citizen largely unaware of what is really going on in it.
Austria has an almost 98% coverage-rate of collective bargaining agreements. The waste economy is a notable exception to this rule. This leads to poor working conditions, stagnating wages and higher tolerance for exploitation even when compared with the national average. People who pick up our trash are not robots. They have a job that is hard and injury-prone in and of itself. The last thing they need is working under continuations that are unnecessarily stressful and harmful to their well being. Union organization does not solve all the problems of wage slavery – but it makes some of the worst aspects of it more bearable. Since this is an industry that is largely unprotected by union power – the average worker in this industry is missing out on a significant amount of money through unpaid Pauschalen and social dumping. But freedom and dignity are also values which everyone knows are important at work and can only be enforced by the threat of collective action. So long as the leading company in this industry remains without a strong union presence, the workers in the whole industry are bleeding unnecessarily. Not for the “environment” as job descriptions will put it, but for the greed of its owners. But the story does not end with the workers.
Though aggressive use of its position in the industry, companies like Saubermacher can also force communities who are in weak negotiating positions to accept deals that are bad for their citizens. The cities with publicly owned Waste Management, have been significantly cheaper for the average citizen. Unfortunately, only the big cities who have the money to keep up with the requirements lobbied by big multinationals like Saubermacher can keep up their waste management verstaatlicht. Graz (who manages its waste in partnership with Saubermacher) is the notable exception with prices 2 times more expensive than Salzburg, Wien, Innsbruck and Linz which all organize their waste municipally. Besides this, the companies have been secretly lobbying against Mehrweg and Pfand- Systeme which are direct competitors to their business models. This does not prevent Saubermacher from presenting itself as the champion of “circular economy” (vaguely defined industry term) and being good for the environment.
History taught us there is only one way that these abuses by the big corporations can be put to an end – to expose them for what they are and to reclaim our rights and dignity from their claws. It’s never an easy battle, but it’s the only thing that worked.