Fight the Man!: 8 Defining Strikes in New York City History
- That’s a horse-drawn carriage dumping garbage on the streets right there. Not pictured: all the children and rats who would soon come to play in it.
City Sanitation Strikes of 1911 and 1968
Of all the strikes to have, I sincerely feel like this would be the worst. I mean, no school? That’s bad! No shirtwaists? Horrible! But piles and piles of garbage collecting on the streets to make this city a playground for rats and opossums? That would be the worst thing ever. And, yes, there are opossums in New York. I saw one the size of a small horse in Prospect Park a couple of weeks ago. I think there might even have been a rat on his back. Possibly riding side saddle. It was dark, though. I couldn’t see that well.
Anyway, the very informative website Ephemeral New York has a great quote from the New York Times about what it was like to be in New York for the 1911 sanitation strike, “In one block in 49th Street the reporter counted 84 cans, every one piled high with garbage and other refuse, while near the avenue corners were big piles of garbage, mostly of rotting perishables, which, like those in 47th street, were surrounded by playing children and scavenging cats and dogs.”
No mention of rats? Were kids in those days basically the equivalent of rats? I guess, probably, they were.
There was another garbage strike in 1968, where the Times reported (rather poetically, I think) “With many once-clean sections of New York looking like a vast slum as mounds of refuse grew higher and strong winds whirled the filth through the streets, Mayor Lindsay made a brief inspection tour and reported grimly that, ‘the situation is getting very serious.'” This strike ended when Governor Rockefeller stepped in, giving in to the striking workers’ demands. Mayor Lindsay was pretty peeved by this and “denounced the Governor’s action as ‘capitulation’ to a union that has gone on strike in defiance of a state law signed by [Rockefeller] that forbids walkouts by public employees.”
Even if the governor was a big coward, the fact remains that he ended the strike and garbage pick-up resumed and THAT is why New York gained a reputation in the 1970s for being a pristine and not at all stinky place to live. Other facts that remain? The lack of garbage pick up in 1968 caused at least one five-alarm fire and extensive property damage in addition to being the source of such things as non-striking workers having their homes sprayed by gun fire as a method of intimidation. Workers unite!