Janitors Urge Unity as Contract Talks Near

They clean some of Los Angeles’ most ritzy commercial addresses, places where million-dollar deals, power lunches and chill-out sessions of racquetball and tennis are de rigueur.

Often, though, they earn poverty wages, returning after a grueling night’s work mopping floors and sanitizing toilets in glass towers to their humble abodes in some of Los Angeles’ roughest neighborhoods.

On Saturday, more than 1,000 janitors--mostly Latino immigrants----marched with family members and Proposition 187 opponents along part of Pasadena’s Rose Parade route in a well-orchestrated kickoff to what are expected to be difficult contract negotiations with building owners and cleaning contractors.

“All we want is a decent, living wages with benefits for our families,” said Rosa Ayala, a janitor and executive board member of Local 399 of the Service Employees International Union, which organized Saturday’s union convention, march and spirited rally outside Pasadena’s City Hall. “The owners of these luxury buildings should be ashamed that we are consigned to living in misery.”

Saturday’s events mark a watershed for the union’s “Justice for Janitors” movement, which has garnered national attention for organizing a largely immigrant, low-wage work force at a time of dwindling union ranks nationwide. Local 399 represents more than 8,000 janitors, who clean about 70% of the county’s major commercial office space.

The union’s contract expires March 31. Formal renewal talks with management are pending, but on Saturday, organizers enunciated their goal: “One Union. One Industry. One Contract.”

Labor leaders are seeking to organize the remaining non-union buildings--and more critically, to equalize wages throughout Los Angeles County. Now, a multilevel pay scale prevails, creating a kind of geographical caste system.

Janitors Downtown and in Century City generally average $6.80 per hour with full benefits for themselves and their families. In the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys and elsewhere, hourly wages dip to $4.25, the legal minimum, with no benefits.

Today’s scenario is a striking contrast to the panorama a generation ago, when a largely African American, unionized work force earned well above poverty levels. As recently as the early 1980s, said Jono Shaffer, who directs the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign, maintenance workers here averaged $7.32 an hour.

Today, Zoila Barahona earns $4.25 an hour cleaning the Pasadena Police Department. She has trouble paying the rent and providing for her 1-year old son, Jocsan. “It’s pure exploitation,” she said. Management is resistant to equalizing wages throughout the region.

“To do it all at one time would be too radical,” said Armando DeCastro, chairman of Diversified Maintenance Service.

But union strategists say the costs to management of standardizing wages would be minimal--about an additional cent for each dollar paid in rents.

“It is a penny that L.A. building owners can easily afford to pay,” a union study concluded, “and it is a penny that L.A. can’t afford to do without.”