On Tue, 21 Nov 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Nov. 20, 2006, 9:37PM
>> Houston janitors reach deal to end strike
>
> So, anyone know how this happened? Houston doesn't seem like the friendliest
> venue.
A combination of refined strategy and militance. The Justice for Janitors campaign was innovative 5 years ago, but it keeps on learning and getting better.
The basic model is that they organize the city, rather than the building. They've learned that 80% or more of the janitorial services for large commerical buildings are usually controlled by 4-6 large companies. All of them oppose unionization. But the key turns out to be to pressure them by pressuring the building management companies, which are also concentrated. The key to pressuring the management companies is pressuring the high profile rich tenants. And the key to pressuring the tenants is very embarassing demonstrations that hold them responsible for pauperizing people when a tiny increment in their rent could fix it. The tenants tell the management companies to go away, the management companies tell the janitorial services contractors to make it go away, and the janitorial services companies sign a labor market wide deal so that none of them is at a competitive disadvantage. The combination of pressure from the clients and lack of a real profit motive reason not to if everyone does it clinches the deal.
The exact array of embarassments and which parties are targeted differs in each case and keeps getting refined and varied. In places like Denver SEIU got companies to sign on with a clause that said the contract wouldn't go into effect unless all the other major players signed, and then only a couple of the companies had to be forced. In Houston, where the companies were more recalcitrant, they added a new idea. So sure were they that they had the chain of pressure correctly identified that they struck them all at once -- just the key buildings -- and resorted to sit-down-in-the-middle-of-the-intersection tactics that Chuck0 would endorse. As well as embarassing demonstrations in other countries that are union friendly (like Germany) that endangered overseas contracts.
This campaign of SEIU's is really kind of remarkable. Their goal is to unionize the janitors in every major city in the country. And it no longer looks like a pipedream at all.
The only pity of it is that this strategy of embarassment which works so wonderfully kind of militates against decent coverage. If the reason the companies sign is to turn it off you can't quite trumpet it afterwards. Especially since some of the best of it happens at the level of threat, and looks a little like blackmail, and neither the union nor the companies have any interest in publicizing it. But essentially the corporate campaign of 20 years ago has been refined into a much more targeted and effective tool -- with the result that now that it's really working, you never hear about it.
Michael