It’s Still About Raises, Rights and Respect

Last month, more than 50 Los Angeles police officers waded into a demonstration of striking janitors and their supporters near USC. Low-wage, immigrant janitors fighting for union representation were being clubbed and shoved by police officers acting in defense of the privileged and powerful.

The janitors’ campaign for justice brings to light the problems of the “new economy.” USC is in South-Central Los Angeles, where poverty, unemployment and crime are more prevalent than anywhere else in the metropolitan area. Over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of high-paying manufacturing jobs have been removed from the area, creating a severe economic crisis there with repercussions throughout the city. And, to the extent that those jobs have been replaced, it has been with low-wage service-sector jobs.

At the core of the janitors’ struggle is USC’s outsourcing of its janitorial work to a subcontractor, ServiceMaster, a multinational corporation based in Chicago. As in-house employees, the janitors were part of the “USC family,” enjoying better wages and benefits than counterparts working for subcontractors.

Twenty janitors--more than 10% of the 150-person work force--have been fired in the course of the 11-month organizing campaign. The 20 janitors had 200 combined years of service to USC. But they became expendable.

One of the benefits that the workers are most angry about losing is access to the university for their children. As USC employees, workers with enough service were able to send their children to the university tuition-free. This gave the workers hope that their children would end up with more than they had. As employees of ServiceMaster, they have lost that benefit and that hope.

That hope for a better future also has inspired the janitors to try to organize a union. Over the past 10 years, before USC subcontracted their work, the janitors had run and lost six elections for union representation. Each time, a majority of workers initially signed cards declaring they want union representation. Each time, USC hired union-busting consultants to intimidate workers into voting against the union.

As in many organizing campaigns, the employer’s wealth and power overwhelmed the workers’ aspirations for a better life. USC could deluge employees with anti-union messages. Supervisors could speak with workers individually and in large captive audiences. And there was always the unspoken threat that USC would do what it eventually did: eliminate many of the janitors’ jobs and contract out the rest. Meanwhile, the union had far less opportunity to speak with workers, much less overcome the pervasive fear that USC has enormous and unchallengeable power over its employees’ lives. Thus, elections for union representation bear more resemblance to referendums in authoritarian countries than free elections in a democratic society.

Still, the janitors have persisted in their drive for union representation, this time against ServiceMaster. The janitors say they have learned that the National Labor Relations Board process is ineffective in defending their rights to organize and bargain. That is why they are demanding that ServiceMaster recognize their union after a majority of employees have signed cards declaring that desire. Or else they want an election supervised by local elected officials or community leaders.

As it happened, the Feb. 20 police attack on the janitors came just as the AFL-CIO executive council was concluding its meeting a few miles away in downtown Los Angeles. The labor federation was making plans to promote union organizing efforts, from janitors in Los Angeles to hotel, health care and construction workers in Nevada, clothing and textile workers throughout the South, state employees in Maryland and other workers across the country. And local and national political leaders, including Vice President Al Gore, had addressed the AFL-CIO about the importance of working with labor to improve conditions for working Americans.

The plight of the janitors at USC is urgent evidence that much must be done before all working people enjoy American rights and living standards. Public officials at every level of government must make sure that agencies from the National Labor Relations Board to the Los Angeles Police Department defend workers’ rights instead of defying and denying them. For a revitalized labor movement, it is time to return to our most basic mission: helping working Americans organize for raises, rights and respect.