Contracts covering nearly 4,000 sanitation workers across San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties expired at midnight Wednesday after Teamsters Local 396 and a slate of major waste-hauling companies failed to reach tentative agreements before the deadline. The union says negotiations are continuing even as the contract lapse raises the possibility of labor disruptions across the region's sanitation industry.
The companies involved include Republic Services, Waste Management, Athens Services, CR&R, Ware Disposal, Park Disposal and AAA Disposal, according to NBC 7 San Diego. Republic Services, one of the largest haulers in the dispute, said its existing collective bargaining agreements with the union ended September 30, and that negotiations which began August 14 continued into Wednesday. The company said it plans to keep negotiating in good faith to reach agreements that benefit both employees and customers, per the same report.
Athens Services, meanwhile, is negotiating a successor collective bargaining agreement with Local 396 covering employees at its Paramount yard, and the company said operations and service are continuing as normal, the outlet reported. Other waste-hauling companies named in the dispute did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the station noted.
A Multi-Year Push to Align Every Contract at Once
The simultaneous expiration wasn't a coincidence. Teamsters Local 396 spent years deliberately aligning contract end dates across eight waste hauling companies and 29 facilities throughout Southern California to midnight on September 30, launching its “Our Time Is Now” campaign back in October 2025, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. By synchronizing expiration dates across independent employers, the union maximized its regional leverage, creating the potential for a multi-county work stoppage if talks stall.
Victor Mineros said the companies had every opportunity to reach agreements before the deadline passed, while Alex Moran said close to 4,000 sanitation workers are standing together across Southern California and that companies can still prevent labor disputes by reaching fair agreements, according to NBC 7 San Diego. Local 396 members have participated in bargaining sessions, workplace actions, yard meetings and rallies in recent months, and the union says members plan to continue bargaining in pursuit of strong contracts. Local 396, headquartered in Covina, represents sanitation, package delivery and food delivery workers across Southern California and ranks among the largest sanitation union locals in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, per PR Newswire.
New State Law Removes a Key Shield for Haulers
Just days before the contracts lapsed, the regulatory landscape shifted. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1371 into law on September 27, prohibiting private waste haulers from invoking “force majeure” contract clauses during labor disputes to avoid municipal performance penalties or fees, according to LegiScan. That change strips haulers of a tool they previously used to sidestep municipal fines during a strike, adding financial pressure on employers to settle quickly.
The stakes extend beyond this round of bargaining. In Los Angeles, the Board of Public Works approved releasing a new Request for Proposals in September 2025 for its multi-billion-dollar commercial waste franchise system, recycLA, with exclusive zone contracts set to be awarded starting in February 2027 among haulers including Athens, Republic and Waste Management, as reported by Waste Dive. In Fullerton, the city council shortlisted six waste companies in April, including CR&R, Athens Services and Republic Services, for a franchise contract beginning July 2027, with companies explicitly highlighting their Local 396 labor agreements during council presentations, according to the Fullerton Observer.
A Dangerous Job Fuels the Push for Better Terms
Workplace safety sits at the center of the union's demands. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released in February 2026 ranked refuse and recyclable material collectors as the fifth-deadliest occupation in the country for 2024, recording 37.4 fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time workers and 36 total deaths. Separate federal data found 7,800 nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses among U.S. waste collection workers in 2023, with an injury rate of 4.4 per 100 full-time workers, alongside a notable rise in reported occupational illnesses, according to RouteSmart.
Southern California has seen this kind of standoff before. In December 2021, more than 400 Local 396 sanitation workers at Republic Services facilities in Anaheim and Huntington Beach staged a seven-day strike over unfair labor practice allegations before ratifying a new contract through 2025 that included major wage and benefit increases. When that Orange County strike ended, more than 250 Republic Services workers represented by Teamsters Local 542 in San Diego immediately launched a strike of their own over separate contract impasses. More recently, Republic Services workers in Boston went on an 82-day strike that concluded in 2025 with a 46% wage increase over a five-year contract, according to Fight Back! News.
For now, negotiations between Local 396 and the Southern California haulers remain ongoing, with no tentative agreements announced and no strike called. Whether the companies will negotiate jointly or separately, and whether any contingency replacement operations would be deployed if talks collapse, remains unclear.
