Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The Houston Chronicle, December 1, 2005, Thursday

Copyright 2005 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
The Houston Chronicle

December 1, 2005 Thursday
3 STAR EDITION

SECTION: A; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS;
Janitors joining the union ranks;
The move stands as labor's largest gain in Houston in the past 25 years

BYLINE: L.M. SIXEL, Staff

BODY:
Janitors who clean Houston's big buildings at near-minimum wage rates have won the right to begin negotiations with their employers for higher pay and benefits.
The Service Employees International Union announced Wednesday that a majority of the 4,700 janitors who work for four of the city's largest cleaning companies have joined its ranks.
For Houston's labor movement, SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign is its most successful organizing drive in 25 years, signaling potentially higher wages and benefits for janitors and higher costs for building tenants.
"Wages are clearly the No. 1 issue," said Dan Schlademan, vice president of SEIU Local 1 in Chicago, who was in Houston for the announcement.
Bargaining for the first contract is expected to begin soon he said. But he added that it's too early to say what kind of wage and benefits package the union will try to negotiate.
It would be a "great victory," Schlademan said, if the janitors received a $1 an hour raise, which would represent a nearly 20 percent increase.
The janitors earn an average hourly wage of $5.30 and receive no health care benefits, according to the union. The minimum wage is $5.15.
"Today, I am very pleased to say we did it, Houston janitors," Flora Aguilar told the dozens of janitors who crowded into a conference room at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston for the festive announcement that was accompanied by a mariachi band and janitors banging on plastic buckets.
SEIU officials said that with the support from the majority of janitors at the four companies - ABM Janitorial Services, Sanitors Services of Texas, OneSource Facility Services and GCA Services Group - it will represent 62 percent of those who clean the city's big buildings.
Getting names, addresses Under terms of an agreement with the city's five largest cleaning companies reached in August, the union was given the names and addresses of employees who worked in buildings at least 100,000 square feet.
SEIU also targeted Pritchard Industries Southwest for the union drive.
Union leaders said Wednesday that they collected cards from 65 percent of Pritchard's employees and will present them for certification in the next few days.
If the Pritchard workers join, SEIU would represent 5,300 janitors or 72 percent of those working in large buildings.
None of the companies returned telephone calls for comment.
The union recognition was a quick victory for SEIU, which officially launched its Justice for Janitors campaign in Houston only this spring.
Even though SEIU's national Justice for Janitors campaign has been around for 20 years and has negotiated contracts in 27 cities, representatives of local building owners and even some labor leaders had expected a long struggle.
One tactic that might have sped things along was sympathy walkouts organized by SEIU in other cities.
The union also received widespread support from local religious and political leaders.
Conspicuously absent from Wednesday's event, however, were representatives of the Harris County AFL-CIO which had paved the way for SEIU when it quietly began planning its Justice for Janitors campaign two years ago.
The janitors need a union, said Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO. But he said SEIU, which left the federation in July along with three other unions, is betraying the labor federation in its efforts to recruit city government workers who have long been represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
But Shaw gave SEIU credit.
The last time labor had accomplished anything this big was 25 years ago, he said.
In the late 1970s, the AFL-CIO put $20 million toward the Houston Organizing Project, which brought significant gains among public school teachers and government employees.
But that effort, which also included SEIU efforts to organize food vendors at the Astrodome, was severely hurt when the economy turned down.
Words of caution One observer said that though the SEIU's victory is impressive, no one should expect other quick victories.
"You have to put it in perspective," said Richard Hurd, professor of labor studies at Cornell University.
This is part of a national organizing effort, and while it's certainly important, it isn't clear yet whether it will translate into other successes in Houston or in the rest of the South, he said.
Bill Bux, head of the labor and employment law section at Locke Liddell & Sapp, said the next significant event in this campaign will be the reaction from building owners, once negotiations with the cleaning companies are finished.
In some cases, the cleaning companies have "cost-plus" contracts with building owners that could allow them to benefit from the high-wage costs, SEIU's Schlademan said. That means the cost to the building owners could rise.
Will the building owners pass along the increased costs to tenants or will they find another nonunion company? Bux asked. Many building leases have "pass through" provisions that allow the owners to automatically pass along increases in bills such as utilities and cleaning services to their tenants.
If the cost gets too high, some tenants may not be able to afford to stay when it's time to renew their lease, Bux said.
Small businesses that lease space in downtown high-rises will be especially hurt by the increased costs, "that'll go right to their bottom lines."
"This will hurt a lot of different groups," he said. "There are a lot of dynamics."

NOTES: lm.sixel@chron.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: 1. ECSTATIC: Norma Rubio, an employee with OneSource janitorial services, exults at the announcement that the company will be represented by the Service Employees International Union. The news came at the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston.; 2. PRAYERFUL: Otilia Carona of Houston holds her rosary during the announcement that the janitorial company she works for would be represented by the Service Employees International Union. Houston janitors earn an average of $5.30 an hour, but their unionized counterparts in other cities earn several dollars an hour more. (p. 6)
1.-2 JOHNNY HANSON: FOR THE CHRONICLE