We don't have to imagine too much. In 1968 NYC garbage collectors struck for better wages. The mayor thought he had the upper hand. Wrong. After 9 days and 100,000 tons of uncollected trash, the sanitation workers won their strike. That was 50+ years ago. I don't know how much trash would accumulate per day in 2023.

We can compare the essential work of garbage collection to the semi-essential work of banking. There was a banking strike in Ireland in 1970. Without any additional spoilers, here is a pretty decent article describing and comparing both incidents:

https://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-than-bankers/