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What I'm saying is when the problem started to be noticed the union would have protected the workers from retribution for not going up their till it was safe. These workers where working in conditions they new wasn't safe. Afraid of losing their jobs if they said anything. A union would have gave them protection.

I don't want the core issue of this tragedy to become a union debate. A union wouldn't have prevented that collapse. I don't blame the collapse entirely on the owners of the landfill, it's an industry wide problem. There are certain materials that make a landfill unstable. Those materials bring in a lot of money. There are no rules set in stone on how much you can take, or how to integrate that material into a landfill. The onus isn't even completely on the landfill. The producers of that material could be forced to change the consistency of the material, which would also be very expensive. Many landfills are currently sliding to a certain degree. Greentree is the first implosion of an entire cell I have heard of, and things were done there that compounded the problem, but the root cause of that collapse is a festering problem that gets worse every year. As more municipalities push to recycle and compost normal municipal solid waste, less MSW is available to mix with the special wastes to stabilize them. That's fine, recycling and composting are good things, but when the makeup of a waste stream changes that dramatically, steps need to be taken to ensure the safety of the operators. I want Greentree to be a warning sign to the industry, not just the owners. These landfills are designed to hold this waste forever, we are still learning what happens at the bottom of a pile that is 200 feet tall and 30 years old, and the current waste stream is far different than what it was then. The entire industry needs to take a deep breath and look at what we are doing to the sustainability of our landfills. Greentree should be a watershed moment

New York City stopped collecting for over a month one time

I worked at ups for Christmas and recall them shutting the line down and all deliveries pulled over because of a safety issue. We sat there eating our lunches till the dispute was settled.

After listening to the cell phone calls between a couple of employees that WJAC aired, I think that they were very afraid. And one worker spoke to Kody from WJAC under anonymity because he was afraid of losing his job. I have to agree with Micheal, if unionized, the employees wouldn't have to be afraid of exposing what was going on. They all saw the danger and that it was building. Most of these guys live paycheck to paycheck, they don't get good wages from AD and they have families to support. We've talked to four of them, they were all afraid. And they're still afraid of speaking out because they need their jobs, it's just a really sad situation. I was so hoping that something would be done, but a 12000 fine just doesn't cut it. For a life lost and they're just really lucky that many more lives weren't lost that day.

At least 25 years ago when I think BFI owned the landfill I knew a few operators who wanted to unionize. One of them even went to a nationwide company competition but that didn't stop them from being let go. Rather than getting the Union to fight the individuals moved on to other jobs.