Janitorial Firm Violated Labor Laws, NLRB Says

The National Labor Relations Board ruled Thursday that a maintenance company that contracted to clean the downtown Home Federal Building violated several federal labor laws and an NLRB official threatened to take the firm to court if the violations do not stop.

Bob Chavarry, acting NLRB agent-in-charge in San Diego, said that an investigation by the federal agency revealed that DID Building Services illegally fired and harassed employees who supported the Service Employees Union, Local 102’s attempts to organize the 25 janitors who clean the building.

Chavarry accused DID, a Long Beach-based janitorial service company, of the following labor law violations:

- Company officials fired five workers because they supported the union.

- Some employes were threatened with retaliation if they supported the union.

- Employees’ hours were arbitrarily changed, resulting in a violation of their rights.

- DID officials forbade employees to wear buttons supporting unionization while on the job.

“If this matter is not settled we may be seeking injunction relief,” said Chavarry. “The employer or his representative is supposed to get back to me tomorrow (Friday).”

Efforts to reach Carmine Didomenici, president of DID, and Patrick Lopez, the company’s senior labor consultant, for comment on the NLRB decision were unsuccessful.

Local 102 President Eliseo Medina said that union officials were “happy as hell” over the NLRB’s decision. Medina has been leading a union drive to organize the approximately 450 janitors who work in the downtown area.

Currently, the union has negotiated contracts with two maintenance companies that clean some of the biggest downtown office buildings, including the Great American First Savings Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of California and the San Diego Trust & Savings Bank.

The Home Federal Building, located at 7th Avenue and Broadway, has been the scene of demonstrations and confrontations between the union and Home Federal officials during the past two months. Home Federal, which hired DID to clean offices in the building, was not a target of the NLRB investigation.

Allan Kirkhope, Home Federal spokesman, has complained that the savings and loan is caught in the middle of a labor dispute that it it has no influence over. At least five demonstrators have been arrested by police and four janitors, who were suspected illegal aliens, also have been arrested by the Border Patrol since the labor dispute began in May.

Medina presented a list of grievances alleging illegal activity by DID to Kirkhope and Home Federal officials in May. Kirkhope said that he looked into the allegations but found no evidence of wrongdoing by DID.

On Thursday, Sheree Zizzi, a Home Federal spokeswoman, defended the Home Federal probe but said that the savings and loan’s officers welcomed the NLRB findings.

“The investigation that Home Federal conducted was very preliminary. We recommended to the union that they take their grievances to the NLRB. It is only natural that the NLRB’s findings were more comprehensive than ours . . . The union’s grievances are in the right hands now. The NLRB can do something about it, unlike Home Federal,” said Zizzi.