Hundreds of Boston-area sanitation workers have walked off the job and say they will not collect trash until they reach a deal in their contract negotiations with waste management giant Republic Services.

According to the Teamsters Local 25, the effort to reach an agreement before their contract expired this past Monday has been stymied by management which refuses to bend on “improved wages, better benefits, and stronger labor protections.”

Affected towns include Arlington, Beverly, Canton, Danvers, Gloucester, Lynnfield, Malden, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Marblehead, North Reading, Peabody, Reading, Saugus, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wakefield, and Watertown.

What comes next, said Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, is entirely the fault of the waste management company.

“If your rubbish is piling up on the Fourth of July, remember who’s responsible for it: the white-collar criminals who run Republic Services,” O’Brien said in a statement shared by the local union.

About 450 Bay State union members started picketing on Tuesday, but Victor Mineros, Director of the Teamsters Solid Waste and Recycling Division and Teamsters Western Region International Vice President, said that “this fight isn’t just in Boston.”

Other local unions “are having similar contract disputes with Republic,” according to the Teamsters, and could launch strikes of their own “at any moment” with the potential for as many as 3,500 Teamsters to walk away from their work.

“From California to Massachusetts, Teamsters nationwide are dealing with the same problems with this company. If Republic doesn’t get its act together quickly, we will make an example of this employer for its mistreatment of our members. American workers deserve better,” Mineros said.

Republic Services did not immediately return a request for comment on the strikes.

The walk out could affect as many as 400,000 Massachusetts residents, according to the union.

O’Brien said that it wasn’t the Teamsters who started this fight, “but we will finish it.”

“Our members will do whatever it takes to finally get the respect they’re owed,” he said.

The union held a “practice picket” in Boston on June 10 in the runup to the expiration of their contract, and indicated then they were willing to strike if negotiations failed.

After their contract expired at midnight on Tuesday, members of the Teamsters Local 25, in a video shared via social media, said that they will continue the fight until they are offered their fair share of the “multibillion dollar” profit the waste management company posts annually, and that they will “die on our feet before we live on our knees.”

“Divided we beg, together we win,” one Teamsters Local 25 member says in the video.

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who represents several of the affected towns, said that he’s standing with the union in their fight.

“Our communities simply cannot function without sanitation workers. Especially with the holiday weekend approaching, these men and women deserve to be treated like the essential workers that they are,” he said via social media.