With Metro Service Group struggling to meet the demands of its trash pickup contract with the city, owner Jimmie Woods brought in reinforcements.
Enter Sidney Torres IV and his IV Waste trucks.
IV Waste has been helping Woods out by covering the Lake Vista neighborhood for Metro, and Torres joined WWL Radio to discuss the challenges of finding good help in the current economic environment.
“Right now it’s very difficult in certain situations to get people to even come to work with certain benefits and things that are being given out by the government,” Torres said. “So the ones that you do get and the ones that want to work, pay them the top dollar so they don’t leave.”
That top dollar pay can reach $200 a day for some of his employees.
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Torres says it’s certainly a different climate than his first stint cleaning up the city’s messes as owner of SDT Waste and Debris, but that the objective is still the same.
“I make less money doing this, but the bottom line is the job gets done,” Torres said.
But just like great power brings with it great responsibility, good pay means workers must put in good work and requires good management to make sure everything gets done the right way.
“You’ve got to be able to have supervisors that are going to discipline these guys when they come five minutes late,” Torres said. “You can’t just let it slide because as soon as one sees that happen, the next one does it then the next one does it. And before you know it, you’ve got all these trucks in your yard and no one to drive them.”
Torres, whose company is contracted for trash pickup in the city of Kenner and St. Bernard Parish, is working out a deal to provide additional support to Metro Service Group on Friday, according to WWL-TV.