Buoyed by New Respect, Janitors Back at Work

Jesus Perez spent Tuesday afternoon preparing for another night of scrubbing toilets, vacuuming floors and dusting office desktops in a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper.

But Perez, who has done the work for the past 20 years, said this night would be different. He is among those returning to the job after a three-week strike by Los Angeles janitors that drew national attention to the plight of low-wage workers.

“My head is high,” Perez proclaimed as he relaxed with fellow janitors in the downtown hall of the Service Employees International Union.

The financial victory for union janitors is modest: Their 25% raise over three years will leave them in 2003 with a top base wage of $9.70 an hour--still below 1983 levels, when adjusted for inflation.

But Perez says they won some dignity. “This strike was not just about our wages. It was about respect,” said Perez, 47. “We showed we’re part of a bigger movement.”

Respect, Perez said, began to swell as their strike made headlines. Prominent politicians, including former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, joined their marches. Office workers in buildings cleaned by the janitors proclaimed their support, Perez said.

Even executives shouted encouragement as they passed him on the picket line, he said. “When it got on the news, people began to understand us. They cheered for us,” he said, giving a thumbs up. “The tenants are going to be happy we’re back.”

There also is some bitterness. Those who walked off the job say they resent others who continued to work. “I am angry,” said Ana Coto, 42. Nine of 30 janitors employed at her financial district building worked during the strike.

They told her they needed the money for rent, car payments and to support their children. “But I also have those responsibilities,” she said.

Julio Ruiz, a janitor at the Los Angeles Times, said he was offended by a co-worker who refused to strike and who had given a union T-shirt to a supervisor. The blood-red “Justice for Janitors” shirts became a badge of honor for strikers. “That was almost sacrilegious,” said Ruiz, 36.

Ruiz said he will file a grievance against co-workers who did not strike. Workers who cross picket lines can be fined or expelled, according to union bylaws.

Ruiz said he does not want janitors who declined to strike to lose their jobs. But he hopes they will be assigned to work somewhere else. That way, he said, “I won’t have to look at the ones who were laughing in my face” during the strike.

Carole Thorsell, an executive at Diversified Maintenance Services, said her company will bring in outside counselors to meet with its janitors and supervisors. The third-party counselors will meet with employees separately first, then in joint sessions to ease tensions. “We want to make sure both sides can move forward,” she said.

The union will decide over the next few weeks whether to discipline members who did not strike, said Local 1877 representative Blanca Gallegos. She said the union also must determine how it will spend more than $2 million that remains from donations and its own strike fund. The money was set aside for such strike expenses as the $150 checks that were handed out to janitors Tuesday evening to make up for lost pay, Gallegos said.

Remaining funds may be used to support the 5,500 San Francisco area janitors who are in their own contract battle.

After the weeks of protests in Beverly Hills and Century City and on Bunker Hill, about 1,500 janitors and supporters plan to march Thursday through Silicon Valley. The protest will continue the union’s strategy of dramatically contrasting rich and poor: a march through the valley of high-tech millionaires.

Meanwhile, janitors in the Los Angeles area will return to their jobs, seeking to make up for their weeks without pay.

Perez said he plans to eventually keep a deferred promise to his grandchildren. With the strike’s end, he said, he hopes to save enough for an outing “maybe by July.”

The family, he said, will go to Disneyland.

Times staff writer Nancy Cleeland contributed to this story.