Defiant Janitors Gird for Contract Battles
A decade ago Los Angeles janitors led a national labor renaissance, proving through fearless, in-your-face street actions that unions could indeed be relevant to an outsourced, low-wage, immigrant work force.
Now comes Round 2.
The red T-shirts are back, stamped with the defiant Justice for Janitors logo of raised fists and brooms. Strike signs are stacked by the hundreds in the corners of union offices.
Many of the 8,500 unionized men and women who empty trash and scrub toilets in some of the county’s highest-priced real estate have already signed pledges to walk off the job Monday. As a master contract expired Friday night, they were itching to start.
“What do we want?” they chanted, just as the same janitors did 10 years ago. “Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
At once, the unfolding drama shows how much the janitors have accomplished and how far they have to go. From a broken, dispirited shell in the mid-1980s, the Service Employees International Union janitors local has built itself back into a formidable presence.
The SEIU now represents workers in about 70% of the county’s commercial office space, including virtually all of downtown Los Angeles and Century City. Their hard-fought first contract--a master agreement signed by all the major union employers--restored health benefits and moved the industry toward a standard county wage rate, which now ranges from $6.90 to $7.80 an hour.
More broadly, the tactics used in Los Angeles created a new model for organizing immigrant workers, who represent a large and growing share of the nation’s low-wage work force and are considered indispensable to the U.S. labor movement.
The success of the Justice for Janitors campaign propelled former SEIU President John J. Sweeney to the helm of the national AFL-CIO. And architects of the campaign were a driving force behind the AFL-CIO’s recent landmark call for a new amnesty for illegal immigrant workers.
Despite all that, Los Angeles janitors are still among the lowest paid in the nation, earning far less than their counterparts in San Francisco, Chicago and New York--even Pittsburgh and St. Paul, Minn.
Largely through union-sponsored conference calls, janitors in far-flung cities have been able to compare notes on wages and benefits, as well as employers and building owners.
“This is not an abstract notion,” said Steve Lerner, who directs the SEIU’s national janitors initiative. “There are janitors making far more, doing the same work, for the same [national janitorial contracting] companies, often in buildings owned by the same developers. There’s only one reason for the difference: Until now, they’ve been able to get away with it.”
He said Monday’s planned action in Los Angeles is merely the first of what could be a wave of janitorial strikes across the country. Contracts covering about 100,000 janitors will expire over the next few months, and talk of a strike is in the air.
Judging from the rebellious tone of a recent video-conference call linking bargaining committee members in Chicago, Portland, New York and San Diego, office trash cans could overflow across the nation this summer.
Members of the Los Angeles bargaining committee are seeking a $1-per-hour raise each year for three years. In response, contractors initially proposed a five-year wage freeze, but have since offered a 20-cent-per-hour annual raise for three years.
Union negotiators said they were at an impasse late Friday afternoon, and called for a strike Monday.
Spokesmen for the two leading janitorial contractors--American Building Maintenance and One Source--did not return calls seeking comment.
Union negotiators argue that building developers and owners, who contract for the janitorial services, are ultimately responsible for wages and working conditions. In some cities, such as Chicago and San Francisco, building owners are directly involved in contract talks, but not in Los Angeles.
SEIU President Andrew Stern has met recently with leading Los Angeles developers, reminding them that union pension funds invest millions of dollars in commercial real estate.
However, Geoffrey Ely, president of the Los Angeles Building Owners and Managers Assn., said owners have only “an observer role” in the dispute. “We’re a consumer of janitorial services,” he said. “Fundamentally, the issues are between the contractors and the SEIU. There’s a lot of discussion about the fact that these people work in office buildings, but the fact is, they are a purchased service like so many others.”
Ely said contractors have assured association members that “they have the capacity to handle a strike if that were to occur” by using managers and replacement workers to clean offices. A greater concern, he said, are the “side effects, like demonstrations, the kinds of things that could disrupt the normal operations of a building.”
SEIU janitors are famous for disruption. During the last contract campaign, there were not only strikes and pickets but street theater, plus appearances at shareholder meetings and even at restaurants frequented by high-profile building tenants. Marches and rallies during the organizing campaign of 1990 were marked by angry exchanges and one highly publicized violent clash with police in Century City.
This contract round promises to be equally boisterous. Last month as a preview, SEIU organizers drew several thousand marchers to Wilshire and Westwood boulevards. The rally featured whistles, drums, 10-foot papier-mache figures and the arrests of more than a dozen protesters, including Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles).
There have also been attempts to coordinate actions with unionized janitors in other cities, from Oakland to New York. Several locals have already pledged to honor the Los Angeles strike by planning strategic walkouts of workers for national janitorial contractors such as American Building Maintenance.
For all their strength, however, janitorial workers face considerable obstacles. Independent contractors abound, ready to step in with a low bid if a building owner chooses to switch to a nonunion firm.
The union is also extremely weak in suburban areas, where much of the recent growth in office space has been concentrated. Orange County, for example, is almost completely nonunion, and most janitors there earn the minimum wage of $5.75 per hour with no health insurance.
Although the SEIU launched a campaign in Newport Beach and Irvine this week, organizing the county’s fast-growing commercial centers will be a daunting challenge.
For Los Angeles janitors, however, the immediate challenge is to win significant wage gains--and they are digging in for a long and public fight. The SEIU has established a $1-million strike fund, and the County Federation of Labor will open a food bank for strikers Monday.
“The companies aren’t moving. They’re firm in not giving us what we deserve,” said Sandra Barrios, a downtown Los Angeles janitor and member of the bargaining committee. “It’s time for us to win dignity and a fair wage. We are ready to strike.”
