Janitors, Long Paid Little, Demand a Larger Slice Thousands in Strikes and Rallies Across U.S.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
HICAGO, April 26 -- Amid a record economic boom, janitors -- some of America's lowest-paid, least-visible workers -- are taking to the streets and the picket lines from coast to coast to demand a bigger share of the nation's prosperity.
More than 4,000 janitors who clean office buildings in suburban Chicago have been on strike for more than a week, demonstrating downtown and blocking traffic to demand health insurance and a raise that would lift their families out of poverty.
The battle spread from Los Angeles, where a three-week strike by 8,500 janitors ended on Monday after Cardinal Roger Mahony gave them his outspoken support, helping them gain a raise of 26 percent over three years.
In San Diego, 300 janitors have been on strike for nearly three weeks to press their demand for health insurance. In New York, 10,000 janitors marched on Park Avenue two weeks ago to clamor for a raise. And more than 1,000 Silicon Valley janitors have held a series of rallies to hammer home their complaint that in cleaning offices for some of the world's wealthiest high-tech companies, they earn too little to afford decent housing or support their families.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents 185,000 janitors, most of them immigrants, has tried to make them the poster child for the gulf between rich and poor. Is it fair, the union demands, for suburban Chicago janitors, cleaning buildings for people who often earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to get only $6.65 an hour, without health insurance?
"Symbolically, we as a union want to open this century focusing on the economic divide and bridging the income gap in this country," said Andrew Stern, the union's president. "That's what all these contract disputes are about. We want to make sure these janitors gain their fair share of a booming economy and a booming real estate market."
For nearly a decade the union has maneuvered to have most contracts covering janitors expire around the same time, enabling it to create a single nationwide campaign on their behalf.
Although the number of strikes by American labor has been declining for half a century, the Service Employees view this as an ideal time to call strikes: the economic boom has left building owners and cleaning contractors well able to afford large raises, the union believes, and brought low-paid workers public sympathy.
Mike Garcia, president of the local in Los Angeles, said in the aftermath of the strike there, "With Los Angeles as the backdrop, with its huge disparity between rich and poor, with all the uninsured and immigrant workers, we wanted to show that a group of workers can organize and lift themselves out of poverty if they bring enough pressure."
Many building owners, under criticism that wages remain low during a soaring real estate market, say janitors' pay is not up to them, but to the cleaning contractors. And unionized cleaning contractors often say that if they raise wages substantially, they will lose their profit margins and be undercut by nonunion competitors.
The janitors of suburban Chicago began their strike on April 18, the day after 5,500 janitors who work in downtown Chicago office buildings had engaged in a daylong strike and won a contract that will raise their pay to $12.50 an hour from $11.40 over three years. Those janitors already have health insurance.
For the suburban janitors, the main question is why the downtown janitors have better pay and benefits.
Barry White, chief negotiator for the suburban cleaning contractors, attributed the disparity to the competition that these contractors, unlike those in the heavily unionized downtown, face from nonunion companies. The unionized suburban companies, Mr. White said, fear that the price of family health coverage, about $1.78 an hour, might push costs so high that nonunion competitors will underbid them for contracts.
"We think the full family coverage the union is seeking is far too expensive a benefit for people earning $6.65 an hour," Mr. White said.
Among those people is Rosa Pederosa, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant, who stood alongside hundreds of other striking janitors blocking traffic in suburban Oak Brook on Tuesday. Ms. Pederosa was excited, although also somewhat worried, about being part of a strike that seeks two things she badly wants: health insurance and higher wages. With a bugle blaring and janitors drumming on the bottoms of plastic wastebaskets, the strikers inched forward, next to an upscale mall, chanting, "Sí, se puede" ("Yes, we can do it"), as Lexuses and BMW's backed up behind them.
Ms. Pederosa, who has three young children, takes home $440 every two weeks for dusting Venetian blinds at night in a luxury office tower.
"We earn very little," she said. "I don't feel comfortable working near all these really rich people.
The owner and the tenants make a ton of money and dress really well, but earning $6.65 doesn't even cover expenses for my family."
Ms. Pederosa was taken to a hospital last month when she had problems breathing. Now she has two big worries: she may have asthma and, without health insurance or any wages coming in, she has to find a way to pay the $360 hospital bill and the $150 ambulance bill.
For Graciella Chagoya, things are much the same.
Her 9-year-old son needed seven stitches after being hit in the head by a baseball bat. The hospital bill was $1,500, and the ambulance bill $470. Together, they amount to more than two months' take-home pay; she is trying to pay down the bill by $100 a month.
"I don't understand why they don't want to give us better wages or health insurance when I'm working so hard for them," she said.
Health coverage is the main issue in the strike in San Diego, where three janitors and the president of the local have been fasting for six days.
"We're fasting," said Mary Grillo, the president, "to focus on the choices that workers have to make every single day: Do I feed my family, or do I pay my rent, or do I take my child to the doctor? These are not civilized choices in a country like ours."
In all the disputes, the Service Employees union has worked hard to line up community support to pressure both building owners and cleaning contractors. In Los Angeles, the janitors received an anonymous $1 million gift to sustain them during their strike, and whenever they marched through the streets, workers came out of buildings, white-collar and blue-collar alike, to cheer them on.
Cardinal Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, symbolized community support by presiding over a Mass for the strikers. Describing the janitors as "faceless, nameless, voiceless," the cardinal said they deserved a share in "the wonderful fruitfulness of our economy." He praised them for making "visible in our city an invisible problem": the exclusion of many from the boom.
Labor leaders are looking for the success of the Los Angeles strike to take on symbolic importance. Their hope is that the Los Angeles janitors, by reminding the nation about the millions of people on the lower rungs, will galvanize hotel maids, hospital aides and other low-wage workers to join unions and fight for higher pay.
"Clearly the janitors won the hearts and souls and support of the overall community," said Mr. Garcia, president of the Los Angeles local.
"It was definitely looked at as a David-versus-Goliath fight. We were in the right place and right time for a visible fight."