THREE THOUSAND SAN FRANCISCO JANITORS PREPARE FOR A STRIKE
By David Bacon
TruthOut Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10816-three-thousand-san-francisco-janitors-prepare-for-a-strike
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (8/9/12) - The
national confrontation between janitors and some
of the world's richest property owners has
arrived San Francisco, where on Wednesday over
two thousand building cleaners shut down the
city's main artery, Market Street, in a huge
march. Later twenty-seven workers and supporters
were arrested in a financial district
intersection, as they blocked it in an act of
civil disobedience.
Among the many banners carried by the
marchers, by far the most common was one that
said "We Are Ready to Strike the 1%." It clearly
summed up workers' anger, which made this march
even larger than one three days earlier, and
others organized during the weeks prior.
A strike is on the near horizon in San
Francisco, according to Olga Miranda, president
of Service Employees Local 87, one of the oldest
janitors' unions in the country. "Our members
are determined to go on strike, and we've already
called for a strike vote," she shouted over the
chants of marchers. "They're telling us the
union must lead, and going on strike is our
recommendation."
The local already took a vote to
authorize a strike when its contract expired on
July 31 with the city's main building service
employers, Able Building Maintenance, American
Building Maintenance and the San Francisco
Contractors Association. That was fine with
janitor Mohamed Ismael, who said, "A strike is
possible. We don't like to go on strike, but if
they don't make a reasonable proposal, if they
tell us this is what you're going to get, if we
go to the end of the line, then it's better for
us to go on strike."
At issue in San Francisco is the same
sticking point in most union contract
negotiations - healthcare costs and wages. San
Francisco janitors are the second most highly
paid in the country, after New York City, but the
city's living costs are so high that few can
afford to live there. Ismael was fortunate
enough to find affordable housing in the city 20
years ago. But now the contractors are demanding
that workers pay $600 a month for family
healthcare coverage, and he has a wife and four
children. They offer a raise of 50¢ an hour,
which would total about $85, resulting in an
effective wage cut of $515 a month.
"If they do this, there is no way I could
live as a human being in San Francisco," Ismael
says. "I would have to leave."
Miranda claims bitterly "they're forcing
families out of their homes. We have these
benefits because our union has been here for 78
years. We're saying, don't take away what we
already have. They're offering 50¢ and they have
revenues of millions. We absolutely cannot
afford to pay this."
Olga Miranda, President of Service Employees Local 87
Ismael works at Embarcadero Center 4, one
of four huge office and retail buildings on the
San Francisco waterfront owned by Boston
Properties, which reported total revenue of $1.7
billion in 2011.
At night the buildings are outlined in
lights, a signature element of the city skyline.
Inside, Ismael runs floor polishers and cleaning
equipment, empties waste baskets, and washes down
bathrooms for Able Building Maintenance, his
direct employer and the company with the cleaning
contract for 4 Embarcadero Center.
But the real wealth and power in relation
to the janitors belongs to Boston Properties and
other real estate investment groups. They
dictate the terms of the contracts for cleaning
the offices of their tenants, another extremely
wealthy group that includes banks like Wells
Fargo and other major corporations.
Nevertheless, cleaning contractors are hardly mom
and pop operations, and haven't been for decades.
They're large corporations themselves. Able and
its main San Francisco rival ABM, clean buildings
for real estate trusts throughout the U.S. and
all over the world.
Like their banner says, janitors are up
against the 1%, whether they're direct employers
or the financial interests behind them.
Warren Delahoussaye works at 50
California Street, a tall office building owned
Shorenstein, whose founder Walter Shorenstein
started the San Francisco office property boom
decades ago. This trust is now the biggest
player in the city's commercial real estate
market, and has expanded to own buildings around
the country. The Shorenstein real estate
portfolio now tops $6 billion. "These
corporations and the wealthiest 1% whose offices
and buildings we clean, can afford to do right by
San Francisco families," Delahoussaye says.
If San Francisco's 3000 union janitors go
on strike, it will be the first time since 1996,
and the largest janitorial strike since the huge
Los Angeles walkout of 2000. The other big
janitors' local in California, United Service
Workers West, almost struck over similar employer
demands when its contracts expired April 30,
which cover 10,000 members in the East Bay,
Silicon Valley, Sacramento, Los Angeles and
Orange County. After marches and civil
disobedience agreements were settled in June.
In July, however, janitors went on strike
in Houston, where the Service Employees union
only signed a first contract six years ago, also
as a result of a strike. This year Houston's oil
and bank interests, and the contractors working
in their buildings, proposed to increase the base
hourly wage of $8.35 by fifty cents, in raises to
be spread over five years. ABM is a major
employer in Houston, as it is in San Francisco,
and the same 50¢ offer showed up on the
bargaining table in both places.
In Houston, however, janitors, still only
have health coverage for individual workers, not
their families. Many make an average of less
than $10,000 a year because they can't work
enough hours to earn more. They're demanding a
$10/hour minimum wage, and more working hours to
raise their overall income.
Five hundred of the union's 3200 members
are on strike. Since negotiations hit the rocks,
Houston intersections too have been blocked by
supporters in acts of civil disobedience. In the
strike's second week, the union called on other
janitors' locals around the country to mount
one-day work stoppages in solidarity, and
cleaners then walked out of buildings in New
York, California, Illinois and other states.
San Francisco has the hottest commercial
real estate market in the country. Despite
foreclosures on the homes of workers, and
thousands of working class homeowners in the Bay
Area under water because their homes are now
worth less than their loans, the prices of city
office buildings continues to go up. And they
are selling. The corporate tenants as well are
recording large profits.
One union study, "How Much is The 1%
Holding Back Your Family," argues that
corporations with California headquarters have
cash reserves of $500 billion. The Federal
Reserve says that the cash reserves of U.S.
corporations have more than doubled since 2000,
including during the years of the current
economic crisis.
"It's ridiculous in a city where the
market is continuing to grow and companies have
so much cash that janitors are expected to pay
$600 more for their healthcare," Miranda charges.
Nevertheless, no progress was reported in
negotiations the night before the latest San
Francisco march, and no new sessions are
scheduled. In the media, contractors'
association negotiator Jim Beard said employers
were negotiating in good faith.
A strike is now looming in San Francisco.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization
Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
(Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border (University of California,
2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefE&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvg&feature=related
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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