City’s ‘Invisible’ Workers Seek Better Pay : Union Says Aliens Who Clean Downtown Buildings at Night Exploited

They are called the invisible work force, the urban farm workers of the downtown area. About 98% of them are Mexican immigrants. Many of them cross legally from Tijuana every afternoon to work illegally at night as janitors in the high-rise and other office buildings that zigzag across the San Diego skyline.

Melting into the nocturnal world inside the myriad offices and suites, the unseen janitors usually begin their vacuuming, dusting and cleaning while the army of white-collar workers are en route to the suburbs. The next morning’s buffed floors and clean restrooms are usually taken for granted, without much thought given to the person behind the mop and broomstick.

But if union officials have their way, this will change.

“Who do you think cleans the buildings?” asks Eliseo Medina, president of Local 102 of the Service Employees Union, AFL-CIO. “It’s not a genie.”

The unseen janitors, says Medina, make up the most underpaid labor force in San Diego’s burgeoning downtown area. With this in mind, Medina and the union began an aggressive drive earlier this year to organize janitors who clean the 18 biggest downtown buildings--with 100,000 square feet or more--where the city’s corporate elite daily make decisions that influence virtually every local resident.

Some Organizing Success

The drive to unionize has met some modest success, but last week the National Labor Relations Board delivered a ruling that Medina called the “turning point” in the union’s campaign to organize the janitors.

After a two-month labor dispute at the Home Federal Building, the NLRB ruled Thursday that DID Building Services had violated several federal labor laws when the company illegally fired and harassed janitors who favored representation by Local 102. NLRB officials threatened to take DID to court over the violations. DID, a Long Beach-based firm, has contracted since 1982 with Home Federal to clean the building.

Although Home Federal was not a target of the NLRB investigation and the savings and loan is not directly involved in the dispute, Medina said that the NLRB’s warning should be heeded by the maintenance contractors and the building owners.

“It was a double message. It was the cleaning companies that were put on notice, but building owners can’t afford to ignore the ruling. Contractors and building owners can’t violate the law, trample on the janitors or sit back and watch while the law is being violated. As far as we’re concerned, Home Federal and all the other building owners are a party to these disputes, whether they want to be or not,” Medina said.

But Jack Moshgat, president of the local Building Owners and Managers Assn., argued that building owners have no business getting involved in a labor dispute between the union and janitorial firms.

Management Unconcerned

“That dispute is strictly between the contractor and the union. All we do is hire the contractor. As an organization we’ve never gotten involved in labor negotiations. And we don’t intend to start,” Moshgat said.

According to statistics compiled by Local 102 researchers, there are about 450 janitors working in about 150 buildings in the downtown area, including Horton Plaza.

Nobody knows how many of these workers are Tijuana residents who cross the border daily with legitimate visas that allow them to visit the United States but forbid them from working. According to a union study, as many as 50,000 Tijuana residents cross the border every day to work in this country.

The average hourly wage for janitors is said by the union to be $3.50 during an average work day of about five hours. The overwhelming majority of workers are hired by cleaning firms that provide no employee benefits, Medina said.

“These people get no benefits, not even paid holidays or vacations,” Medina said.

A man (he requested anonymity) who cleans offices at the Imperial Bank Building at Seventh Avenue and B Street said he dreads the holidays that most American workers eagerly anticipate throughout the year.

“I can see why you look forward to the holidays. You get paid for them. I get the day off, too, but my employer doesn’t pay me for that day,” the man said.

However, this is contested by Tom Puffer, head of the San Diego Employers Assn. Puffer, who has helped local employers negotiate labor contracts for about 30 years, said that a 1985 study of local employers showed that every company surveyed gave employees paid vacations and holidays.

Higher Wages Claimed

Puffer also challenged the union’s allegation that most janitors are paid a $3.50 hourly wage. He said that some building maintenance firms in the employers association pay substantially more than $3.50 an hour and include a generous benefits package for employees. He declined, however, to name the companies.

Paying low hourly wages is only one way that contractors exploit janitors, Medina said. Some janitors who usually work in pairs are paid as little as $200, or as much as $340 a month, for cleaning an entire floor, he added. To maximize their earnings, janitors who work under this arrangement usually agree to clean two floors.

Other workers, in most cases illegal aliens, enter into “yellow dog” agreements with the maintenance contractors, Medina said. Under this arrangement, the janitor agrees to work as a subcontractor, signing away all rights in the event that he is injured on the job and forced to pay taxes that the contractor would normally pay.

Whatever the working agreement, janitors echo Medina’s charges that they are an exploited class.

Carmen Soto, 29, and her husband, Gabriel, 30, worked as janitors at the Home Federal Building. Gabriel had worked there for seven months and Carmen for four when they were fired last month. DID officials fired the couple after they were forced to miss work for a week when Gabriel was arrested by the Border Patrol and sent to a detention camp in El Paso.

Both Carmen and Gabriel were active in the union movement. Gabriel was arrested by the Border Patrol as he left work downtown and the couple believes the patrol was alerted by the building services firm they worked for.

The Border Patrol claims that Gabriel was detained, rather than deported at San Ysidro as is usual, because he asked to see a lawyer. He was taken to an El Paso detention center because the closer El Centro center was full, the Border Patrol said.

Gabriel denied the Border Patrol statements and pointed out he has been given an amnesty card, under the provisions of the new immigration law.

After the couple raised $2,000 to get Gabriel released on bond and an additional $150 for his plane fare to San Diego, they reported to work and were promptly fired for absenteeism. Like most janitorial workers, Gabriel also had a day job where he earned $7.50 an hour working in a sausage factory.

After his arrest by the Border Patrol, Gabriel lost that job too and is now working for $4 an hour in a warehouse. Carmen has yet to find a new job and is concentrating on caring for the couple’s three children.

30% Have Signed Up

Currently, the union represents about 90 janitors--roughly 30%--of the 280 workers who clean the “big 18” buildings downtown, Medina said. Overall, the union represents about 20% of the estimated 450 janitors who work downtown, he added. But it wasn’t always like this.

“In 1981 and 1982 we used to have good union contracts throughout the downtown district, with benefits,” Medina said. “But since then we’ve gone from representing about 85% of the workers to about 20%.”

Medina and other union officials blame the building owners and managers and maintenance firms for undermining the union contracts. After 1982, building owners began awarding contracts to companies that did not recognize the union and offered to do the job cheaper.

A more recent example of this practice occurred at the Executive Complex Building, on Broadway, which has been picketed by janitors. The building owner awarded a new contract to a cleaning firm that did not recognize the union and the workers’ wages were cut from $3.85 an hour to $3.65 overnight, Medina said.

Moshgat of the Building Owners and Managers Assn. said that building owners are not obligated to contract with a company that recognizes the union.

“It’s (union recognition) really a matter for the individual janitorial contractors. Typically, the building doesn’t care which way it goes, union or non-union. Our view is that you find a good, competitive bidding situation where you get the best bang for your buck,” Moshgat said.

But Medina said that building owners have a moral obligation to see that janitors who clean their offices get paid a decent wage. The current company practice of looking for the lowest bidder in order to maximize profits perpetuates exploitation of the janitors, Medina added.

‘Dog-Eat-Dog Business’

“Maintenance contractors, they’re in a dog-eat-dog business. And this activity is encouraged by the building owners. The contractors are not competing on efficiency, they’re competing on who can offer a cheaper contract . . . one that completely bypasses workers’ benefits. And right now the building owners could care less if a worker is being paid a decent wage or if he has medical insurance,” Medina said.

Most buildings do not hire their own janitors, and building owners and managers defend the practice of taking bids and contracting with an outside firm for janitorial services.

Monica Wiley, a spokeswoman for Home Federal, admitted that the lowest bidder is usually awarded the contract, but she said that quality is also a consideration.

“As with many of the jobs that we contract out, our janitorial contracts go through a bidding process . . . Every firm tries to keep its costs down. But we pick the firm who is most competitive in price, service and reputation,” Wiley said.

Ultimately, building owners will have to get involved in negotiations between the maintenance companies and the union, Medina said. If the owners do not act voluntarily, the union will apply more pressure to get them involved, he added.