Labor: Members Contend Current Work Stoppage Causing Tenant Disruptions
Janitors and union officials seeking a better contract from Downtown cleaning contractors were joined by the janitors’ ultimate employers last week, the building owners, in an effort to end the nearly monthlong strike.
The San Diego Building Owners and Managers Association said it wants the two sides to come together and resolve the strike that has affected 21 buildings in the Downtown area.
“BOMA’s members would like to see a swift resolution to this prolonged labor dispute,” said Tracie Hager, president of BOMA. “We believe that the only way to resolve the strike is for both sides to sit down at the table and talk. At this point, it isn’t happening.”
Mary Grillo, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 2028, said she was hoping the entry of the building owners group would help bring the sides to the table. However, she said no bargaining sessions were scheduled.
Grillo and three other janitors have been on a hunger strike, refusing to eat solid food for about a week until the strike is settled. The fast follows on the heels of the same strategy employed by striking union janitors in Chicago recently.
Los Angeles janitors settled a strike last month, which ended with the union workers getting an hourly wage hike of 70 cents, 60 cents and 60 cents over the next three years, plus a $500 bonus.
Joining In
The fasting janitors group was joined by various San Diego elected officials last week, who fasted for a day, and a group of some 300 other janitors, family members and supporters who are fasting for a day or two. “The message we want to send to (the cleaning) contractors is to stop wasting time and dragging this out. Let’s get to the table and get this settled,” Grillo said.
Dick Davis, the negotiator representing the contractors, said his employers would be willing to negotiate, but it is the union that doesn’t have an open mind.
“I’ve just had a conference call with my bosses, and they told me they haven’t had any pressure at all (to settle) from the owners,” Davis said. “They want to see a reasonable settlement, but what the union is asking for, they’re not willing to pass through.”
San Diego’s Downtown janitors now earn a minimum of $7.05 an hour, and are asking for a wage hike of 50 cents an hour for each of the next three years, plus a health insurance plan for full-time employees.
The contractors’ last official offer was a three-year hourly wage hike of 25 cents, 15 cents and 15 cents.
Davis said contractors may be willing to provide health insurance, “if the whole package can be worked out.”
He said the estimated increase of $3.57 an hour is “too much money.”
“It’s like anything else; you only have so much money to spend,” he said. “The union wants everything, more holidays, more sick days, higher pay. They want this; they want that It’s not a bottomless pit.”
Hager said her members weren’t telling the contractors to accept whatever demands the union is making, but to get back to the table and resume talking.
She said the consensus of BOMA members is the strike and picketing are causing some disruptions for tenants, and that they are advocating both sides resume negotiating with an open mind.
Asked if the owners would be willing to pay their contractors more to shoulder the anticipated higher pay and benefits to janitors, Hagen said the estimated amount provided by the union was “not something the owners and tenants would be able to handle.”today, about 225 of the 300 janitors now working Downtown are on full-time schedules.
Davis said janitors in Los Angeles fare better, including getting health insurance, because “the union in L.A. is much stronger than the union in San Diego They’ve got more market share there. Seventy-five percent of L.A. (janitors) are organized,” he said.
The local janitors have been on strike since April 9. Grillo said about 70 percent of the members are staying off the job, but Davis disputed that figure, saying it’s the exact opposite.
He said while some buildings have a large number of union members out, other buildings are barely affected.
Grillo said the hired replacements aren’t doing the same job as the regular union workers.
“We’ve heard that the work is getting done, but it’s not as thorough. Any specialized work such as waxing or buffing of floors isn’t being done, and they have had to hire much larger replacement crews to get the same work finished,” she said.
Health insurance alone is estimated to cost about $2 an hour more.
Grillo said most union janitors do not have health insurance because previously they were working shifts of less than 40 hours a week. Yet
