Isn't that just free association?
Unless they signed a binding agreement that prohibited striking whatsoever, I can't see why they shouldn't be able to.
i.e. A system that doesn't take into account the free association of its components is incoherent.
The existence of unions and free association is built-in to the argument that systems designed to pick up trash sometimes intentionally do not pick up trash.
It’s not a moral judgment that these systems are broken and therefore workers should be slaves. It is an acknowledgment that complex systems end up having to meet conflicting priorities and therefore become, as you say, incoherent.
Failure to collect trash under certain conditions is not a failure of a trash collecting system.
Inability to regularly collect trash is the failure mode we're concerned about.
Of course it is. If your phone fails to make calls under certain conditions, that is a failure of the system, and we try to fix it (for example by deploying more antennas, or by fixing software bugs in it).
If workers refuse to pick up trash, we can also fix that (ask Ronald Reagan).
If the regular collection schedule is every 7 days, and it turns into 14 or even 21, for the most part your trash is still being collected within the bounds of "yeah, my trash gets collected".