I'll repost:
The man works for a company, Waste Management Inc, which accompanied him to the courthouse:
A representative for the company went to the courthouse with McGill, who expected to be ordered to pay up to a $1000 fine, Ms Bandoh said.
...Ms Prince added that Waste Management, which operates throughout the US and reported $14billion in revenue in 2014, would coordinate with its employee about his work schedule and jail time.
Waste Management is responsible for the employee's behavior and the company had ALREADY racked up a lot of fines with this city:
Sharon Kraun, a spokesman for Sandy Springs, told Daily Mail Online that McGill's citation stemmed from an incident where his truck had been photographed by a resident.
The city had seen a previous case where a garbage man was given jail time several years ago and that while no similar cases had happened since, the collectors had 'fair warning', Ms Kraun said.
She said that Waste Management, which had amassed thousands of dollars in fines with the municipality in the last year, suspended McGill for violating its policies before he went to court.
Waste Management could not answer questions about McGill's employment history with the company as of Saturday morning and said it was 'currently still investigating all the facts in the case'.
So what is the real story?
You have an employee who either (a) ignored his employer's order to start work at 8:00am (the time the city desired garbage pick-up) or (b) was following his employer's order to start at 5:00 am (a time the city did NOT want their garbage picked up.) In the first case the employee should have been fired or moved to another job (he was not). In the second case, the company was deliberately ignoring the city's noise ordinances. In either case, the company is taking the city's money but not giving them the service they want. The city should break their contract with Waste Management, Inc and find another company.
The problem with the garbage man's punishment seems to be the result of a "privatized" court system, which assumed the garbage man was guilty and not the company. Basic logic dictates that since the company did not act either by firing the employee or by changing its instructions to the employee, it is the COMPANY that is at fault, not the employee. It's the company that should have been in court and the company that should have been punished. The court was dead wrong to punish the employee for the company's failure to act. But then, it's a privatized court (whatever that is) and there's most likely a lack of experience.
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