Shreveport Garbage Workers Say Absences Are Not Politically Motivated

In a strange turn of events, the week of Shreveport's Mayoral election, a lot of garbage workers are missing work. Upwards of 20 employees missed Monday and Tuesday, causing the city to get behind on garbage collection around the city. Thursday, 11 more workers called in sick. The City had to hire a private contractor to help them get caught back up. That is all factual information. The conflict comes when you start discussing why garbage workers decided to not show up for work this week.

According to Mayor Ollie Tyler, the absences are politically motivated. The Mayor says she received reports that a former employee, wearing an 'Adrian Perkins for Mayor' shirt, showed up on city property and told employees to take off in an effort to make Tyler look bad. According to this story, the mystery man also told sanitation workers that after Adrian wins on Saturday, he'd be their new boss. Adrian Perkins responded to the Mayor's statement by saying he never would endorse or approve of those kinds of actions.

However, the other side of that story is much different. Yesterday, The Shreveport Times published a story featuring the Sanitation worker's account of why they missed work. And according to them, politics had nothing to do with it.

According to the article: "The workers said in an interview at The Times office Thursday that no man in an Adrian Perkins shirt appeared on city property last week to urge them not to work — contradicting Mayor Ollie Tyler's suggestion a day earlier."

The workers went on to say the absences are for two main reasons: people are leaving for better jobs and they have a lot of personal time off to use by the end of the year.

Also from the Times article:  "The employees said that they simply took took some days off, that some were sick and that some missed only Monday. The employees said they attended a customer service class Wednesday and left along with many others after a higher-up in the department yelled at them."

After that meeting, some members of the crew did have a meeting with Perkins to discuss their issues with the Department and how it is currently being run.

Will this trash fiasco help or hurt one candidate? At the end of the day, will any of this matter? Who knows...but I guess we'll find out tomorrow.