Over 375 Madison janitors are winning small but significant victories in the Justice for Janitors campaign to win raises, rights and respect for Clean Power workers.
American Family Insurance recently became the target of complaints that it was aiding union-busting by allowing its offices to be used by Clean Power to hold captive audience meetings and show anti-union videos.
The South Central Federation of Labor added its voice to repeated requests by the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice (ICWJ) that American Family enforce neutrality for its cleaning contractor while on its premises. All responses from the company have been less than satisfactory.
According to media reports, however, pressure on AFI and its board of directors has in fact resulted in Clean Power being directed not to pursue its anti-union campaign at American Family’s headquarters. Also due to pressure, janitors report that they’re getting a $.25-.50 per hour raise and Clean Power is finally letting workers air their concerns.
Interfaith Supports J4J Campaigns Nationwide
In cities around the U.S., moral support from groups like the ICWJ has been crucial in helping janitors organize behind a vision of a stable, living wage job, said Kristi Sanford at the ICWJ’s 5th annual clergy-labor luncheon, February 7.
Sanford, who is organizing director with the national Interfaith Worker Justice, described janitors in downtown Chicago who have long been represented by SEIU: “They earn a living wage of about $13 an hour. They have a pension and full family health care. No one’s getting rich, but it’s enough to live on and maybe buy a house.”
But as Chicago’s suburbs grew so did another unorganized workforce – one earning only the minimum wage with no benefits. “These workers,” Sanford said, “were doing the exact same job, often for the same companies, and also in buildings owned by the same companies as downtown.”
During interfaith delegation visits to building owners, Sanford said Chicago’s Monsignor John Egan asked why janitors in the suburbs were not earning a living wage. “That made building owners think about workers in a different way, not as numbers or profits, but as human beings.”
She said that when companies said they would never give in, the community responded: We know you can do it because you do it downtown. As a result, more than 10,000 janitors in the Chicago suburbs won wage hikes of “dollars more per hour” – and full family health care benefits.
According to Sanford, it’s a movement happening in city after city, in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Today there are Justice for Janitors campaigns in Miami, Houston, Indianapolis – and several other cities in addition to Madison.
Chicago’s interfaith coalition strengthened its resolve, she said, by forging common agreement on a set of principals that all workers – including contracted workers – deserve a living wage and full family health care, and that employers must abide by law, including the right to organize. “What they did was create a positive vision of what the job should be to move forward,” said Sanford.
Due to strong employer resistance, weakened labor laws, and the unlikelihood of ever getting a first contract, campaigns like Justice for Janitors no longer attempt to win representation for workers through an NLRB election, explained SCFL president Jim Cavanaugh at the luncheon.
By appealing to moral principals instead, the strategy becomes one of persuasion, shining a light on working conditions and embarrassing bad actors, when needed, to take responsibility and do the right thing, he said.
Race to the Bottom
Because companies get work by being the lowest bidder, Clean Power alone can’t provide a living wage and decent benefits, explained ICWJ director Patrick Hickey. “The drivers in this equation are the big building owners like American Family who are demanding these low-bid contracts.”
Held down by the low-bid, a growing segment of the population needs to rely on food banks, BadgerCare and other public services, says Hickey, even while family members are working two or three jobs.
“Companies say they want to be neutral, or like American Family, that their policy is not to interfere in the practices of another company. However, we say that by signing the contract as they did, they are already intimately involved,” says Hickey.
Allowing Clean Power to use meeting rooms to show anti-union videos is also “intimate involvement,” he added. “We don’t see them offering rooms so that workers can learn the benefits of having a union. In fact, union organizers are chased off the property!”
“Companies need to understand that the community is not going to allow this to continue,” Hickey continued. “Clean Power REALLY doesn’t care. If they can get contracts that allow them to pay decent wages and benefits, they will do that.”
American Family is actually very generous when it comes to giving back to the community, “in fact, their charitable contributions are quite widespread,” says Hickey.
“What we’re saying is that if they practice justice in the workplace, there wouldn’t be such a need for charity. Charity before justice will not paper over the problem.”