Challenges of organizing waste pickers

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Organizing in the informal economy is unique from more traditional labor organizing in that most workers in the informal economy are self-employed and do not share a common employer. As a result, agitating requires linking workers’ conditions to the broader policy context that they work within, rather than the immediate workplace. A policy can feel more abstract and distant from a worker than a boss does, and is often not enough to motivate workers to join a collective effort, at least on its own.

 

Waste pickers often say that they choose this work for the independence and flexibility it provides. Many waste pickers have already had experiences working in more traditional jobs with managers and co-workers, and have intentionally moved towards self-managed independent work that feels like a better fit for their particular needs and conditions, including health-related conditions. This means that many waste pickers are very independent individuals, and are initially skeptical of or reluctant to participate in collective activities.  

 

Many waste pickers are living with the impact of structural injustices and an insufficient social safety net. Many waste pickers are living with mental health conditions or physical disabilities that may prohibit them from accessing other work, some are undocumented immigrants or asylum seekers, others are living with addiction and some are elderly and lack adequate support. Although some waste pickers do this work to supplement other forms of income, most are living in poverty, and many are unhoused or facing housing precarity. This vulnerability means that many waste pickers are time-poor, and financially constrained in committing resources to organizing efforts. 

 

Waste pickers tend to be  highly diverse - linguistically, racially, ethnically and even generationally. This diversity poses practical challenges, for example, in language interpretation. However, it also poses challenges in building cohesion and consensus among groups who may have very different needs, priorities and lived experiences. This challenge is compounded by the fact that waste pickers are often from communities that face disproportionate discrimination and structural exclusion. At the same time, diversity comes with enormous potential and strength, as waste pickers can contribute their diverse viewpoints and connect with allies representing a range of struggles (for example, immigrant waste pickers in New York bringing in alliances with immigrant rights groups) to make the collective stronger. 

 

There are a wealth of available resources on community and labor organizing. Although many strategies and concepts from both schools are useful and applicable to our work, the unique characteristics of the waste picker community require a unique approach to organizing. At the core of this approach is peer to peer organizing.

Lessons on organizing waste pickers

 

The seeds for our organizations were planted through organizing in its most basic form - listening to workers. Meeting workers where they were, and holding small meetings and listening sessions to facilitate the exchange of experiences and ideas was a powerful step in starting organizing processes for our groups. Listening to workers without a preconceived agenda was essential to both building trust and learning vital information about what needed to be done and what opportunities existed to do it. 

 

On this foundation, NAWPA members have found the following strategies to be helpful in organizing waste pickers in our communities. Organizing here broadly refers to work to secure waste picker engagement and participation in our organizations and movements, for example, in the form of leadership, membership, advocacy and even employment. 

 

Trust-building

 

Trust-building cuts across every area of our work, and starts with a recognition of waste pickers’ realities, constraints, needs and preferences. Trust can be built when waste pickers see these reflected in the way that a workplace, project or organization is designed. For example, recognizing that most waste pickers are in situations of vulnerability and are often disconnected from systems of support, we weave into our organizing work an emphasis on supporting waste pickers to meet practical needs. This has taken the form of facilitating mutual aid, or serving as a bridge to connect waste pickers with social services for example. 

 

Building trust also comes through a commitment to democratic practice. For example, through holding regular meetings and developing policies through democratic processes (see worker-led governance below). 

 

Creating workplaces with both clear guidelines and a culture that is not overly formalized or bureaucratic - retaining elements of the flexibility and autonomy that waste pickers tend to seek out - has also been important for building trust over time. 

 

Deep leadership development

 

We have all prioritized depth over breadth in our initial organizing efforts. While doing broad outreach on an ongoing basis, we have chosen to invest most of our limited time and resources into building a dedicated core of leadership, and facilitating their transition into paid jobs within the organizations we are building together. This has been a question of prioritization with limited resources but also strategy - the idea being that broader organizing will be facilitated later on by a model that can generate decent work and material benefit for the community, but strong core leadership is essential to building that model in the first place. 

 

Critical to our leadership development strategy has been the creation of  progressive leadership pipelines that facilitate access to paid and benefitted employment and progressively increasing levels of responsibility and influence, depending on each individual’s interests and skills. In this process, it has been important to go slow and avoid centralizing too much control or responsibility - limiting growth until multiple people are able to participate in running a program. This is also an important sustainability measure so no one program or initiative is entirely reliant on one person. 

 

Keeping barriers to membership low

 

We see membership as a way to strengthen a sense of belonging and buy-in within our waste picker communities, and a core foundational step in building democratic organizations over time. We have all designed membership programs with low barriers to entry and customized incentives to encourage maximum participation. 

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Requirements to membership that we have successfully used include:

 

• Minimum participation requirement in meetings (e.g. must participate in a given number of meetings up-front or per year to be eligible)

•  Minimal membership fees (e.g. $10/year)

 

Incentives to membership that we have successfully used include:

 

• Identification cards and safety vests

• Priority access to work shifts  

• Opportunities for influence and voice - voting rights at general assemblies, chance to stand for election on worker council, etc.

 

Broader peer networking

 

Learning from each other in the region has been critical to strengthening our work. Regional exchanges among NAWPA members have been essential to trade strategies and troubleshooting together, but also as a way to motivate our leaders, and to gain a greater understanding of the importance of organizing. 

 

We have also benefited from the opportunity to learn from the long tradition of waste picker organizing in the southern hemisphere. As a member of the International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), we are connected to groups with a range of different organizing experiences, including some powerful and well-established waste picker organizations in Colombia, Argentina, India and other countries who have successfully struggled for resources, policy change, contracts for service provision and other wins. We have sent our NAWPA leaders to meetings of the IAWP, including both exchanges and governance meetings, where they have had the opportunity to network with and learn from leaders with first hand experience in securing some of these wins. This kind of exposure and exchange with waste picker leaders from within our region and across the world has been one of the most powerful tools for the development of our leaders and the increased visibility of our network. 

 

Worker-led governance

 

Our organizing efforts have resulted in a strong core of waste picker leadership in each of our organizations, and growing membership. At the same time, we are working to strengthen democratic systems within our organizations for active participatory governance.  

 

For each of our organizations, participatory governance looks different, depending on our organizational forms, opportunities and constraints. For example: 

 

CLV is a solidarity cooperative structure with three different types of members: worker members (who work at the cooperative), user members (who use the cooperatives’ services) and support members (who support CLV’s mission). CLV’s board has 3 seats for worker members, 2 for users and 2 for support members. This structure was meant to prioritize workers and valoristes voices on the board. The board is the main mechanism for worker feedback and accountability to keep the cooperative aligned to the community’s goals. 

 

Ground Score is a fiscally sponsored organization of a 501C3 nonprofit, and, though it is transitioning to register its own 501c3, it operates more like a cooperative, with democratic leadership structures. Sure We Can is a 501C3 non-profit organization, and Binners Project is a charity. These structures present some constraints in terms of the types of worker participation and control possible in direct organizational governance. In the face of these constraints, we have attempted to build in worker participation in the following ways:

 

• Creation of worker-led committees: Ground Score members elect worker representatives to an elected Workers Council, which oversees hired directors, creates internal policies, and helps guide the vision of the organization. Its elected Labor Council helps to resolve disputes.. 

• General meetings and general assemblies: Ground Score holds quarterly General Assemblies to facilitate training, develop policies collectively, vote on human resource policy changes across programs, elect leaders, and foster the democratic growth of the association. Every week, BP holds Binners’ Meetings, where members can raise issues for discussion, and where work shifts are assigned.

• Waste picker representation on boards: CLV and Sure We Can are governed by boards of directors with at least three waste picker members.

•  Incubator space for worker organizations to form: In the case of Sure We Can, a decision was taken that it would be important to develop a separate organizational entity for waste picker organizing that could be fully waste picker-led. In 2023, Sure We Can’s existing membership voted to elect an executive committee of a new entity - the Alliance of Independent Recyclers (AIR), NYC’s first membership-based organization (MBO) of waste pickers. AIR is independent from, but works closely with SWC. SWC’s membership has passed over to AIR, and elected leaders from AIR serve on Sure We Can’s board with a mandate from their membership.