The New York Times, November 28, 2005, Monday

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

November 28, 2005 Monday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Column 4; National Desk; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Union Claims Texas Victory With Janitors

BYLINE: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

BODY:
Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors.
In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.
The service employees, which led a breakaway of four unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the effort even more unusual has been the union's success in a state that has long been hostile to labor.
''It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in years,'' said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas. ''Other unions will say, 'Yes, it can be done here.' ''
Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would embolden other unions to take their chances with ambitious drives in the South, although success could prove difficult because many companies will continue to fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy away from unions.
''This could be important to build momentum in the South, but it's still an incredibly hard task to organize'' there, said Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell. ''One big problem is there's not a base of union members in the South to use to do organizing. And employers in the South have demonstrated a very strong antiunion bias and a willingness to go to great lengths to avoid unionization.''
The service employees' success comes as the percentage of private-sector workers in unions has dropped to 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in more than a century.
With its campaign to organize the janitors, the union has focused on two groups it says are pivotal if labor is to grow again: low-wage workers and immigrants. The janitors, nearly all of them immigrants, earn just over $100 a week on average, usually working part time for $5.25 an hour.
Some of Houston's business leaders oppose the unionization drive, saying its pledge of higher wages may hurt business.
''I don't see how it's going to help Houston from a business standpoint,'' said Mark Jodon, a Houston lawyer who represents employers. ''It has the potential of raising the cost of doing business.''
The union has trumpeted the Houston effort -- which cost more than $1 million -- as part of its Justice for Janitors campaign, billed as an antipoverty movement.
Flora Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who cleans an office tower for $5.25 an hour, volunteered to help the organizing drive as soon as the union gave the janitors questionnaires asking what aspects of their jobs they thought needed improvement.
''The wages are terrible, there are no benefits, there's nothing,'' Ms. Aguilar said. ''I have to stretch myself like a rubber band to make ends meet. I want a union because it will give me a better life.''
In recent days, the union has collected cards signed by about three-fifths of the workers at four of Houston's biggest janitorial companies. An agreement signed in August calls for the American Arbitration Association to inspect the cards and certify when the union has received majority support. The janitorial companies have promised to recognize the union once that happens.
Even if the union is recognized, it still faces a big obstacle in negotiating a contract that delivers some of the hoped-for improvements in wages and benefits.
Yet the union's Texas achievement stands in stark contrast to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s failed drive in the early 1980's, which sought to recruit tens of thousands of Houston workers. Known as the Houston Organizing Project, that $1-million-a-year effort faltered along with the economy, as unions retreated and focused on holding onto the workers they had, and as Texas companies fought hard against unionizing.
Despite the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s anger at the service employees' union, which in breaking away had accused the federation of doing too little to organize workers, Stewart Acuff, the federation's organizing director, praised the Houston janitors' campaign, saying more such drives were needed.
In the current campaign, the service employees urged several public-employee pension funds to press building owners and janitorial companies not to mount hard-hitting anti-union campaigns to defeat the organizing drive. To step up the pressure, the union called a strike at one building in Houston and then arranged sympathy strikes by janitors at 75 office buildings in four other states.
Because the union had no office or local in Houston, its giant local of building-service workers in Chicago oversaw the recruitment drive. That local dispatched a top official to Houston to run the campaign and flew in 25 Spanish-speaking janitors for weeks at a time to talk to janitors at their homes and workplaces.
Workers were told of the union's success in New Jersey, where the salaries of 4,500 recently organized janitors had risen to $11.90 an hour from $5.85 an hour three years ago, and where many part-time workers had been converted to full-time status with health benefits.
The union announced its campaign last April, but two years earlier, it sent a community liaison to Houston who helped line up backing from the city's mayor, several congressmen and dozens of clergymen, including the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph A. Fiorenza. The archbishop even celebrated a special Mass for janitors in August and spoke at the union's kickoff rally, telling the janitors that God was unhappy that they earned so little and did not have health coverage.
''They work for the same companies that are in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and their counterparts there are getting much higher salaries,'' Archbishop Fiorenza said in an interview. ''It's just basic justice and fairness that the wages should be increased here.''
Office building janitors average $20 an hour in New York City. They make $13.30 in Chicago and Philadelphia, cities with office rents comparable to Houston's and a cost of living about 40 percent higher. Janitors in Houston typically earn $5.25 an hour, 10 cents more than the federal minimum wage. But business leaders say the wages are consistent with what other unskilled workers earn.
''The wages that are paid in Houston to janitors are generally above minimum wage,'' said Tammy Bettancourt, executive vice president of the Houston Building Owners and Managers Association. ''Their wages are very much in line with every other part-time job and with the city's retailers. That's what the market dictates.''
Ercilia Sandoval, who cleans offices in a prime office tower, says she has not had a raise in eight years and does not have health insurance. A school dentist recently found that her 7-year-old daughter had six cavities, and fillings will cost $750, when her weekly take-home pay is $91.50.
''Everything has gone up except our wages,'' Ms. Sandoval said. ''If we ask for a raise, they say, 'Anyone who doesn't like it here, there's the door.' ''
The union and the janitorial companies declined to discuss details of the drive because of a confidentiality agreement. The service employees have pressured the companies to accept majority support based on the number of workers who sign cards saying they want a union.
Convinced that it is easier to unionize workers through card checks, the union has shunned the typical process of having an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.
Even before the confidentiality agreement was signed, cleaning company officials were reluctant to discuss the janitors' wages and why they had agreed to card checks and arbitrators' oversight.
OneSource, one of the nation's largest cleaning companies, said, ''OneSource, along with every other major contractor in the Houston area, made a business decision to remain neutral in this process.''
The company said it was premature to discuss wage levels while workers were considering whether to join the service employees' union.
Union leaders said the cleaning companies had agreed to remain neutral because of pressures from building owners and pension funds, and because the service employees had threatened to pressure operations elsewhere, as it did with the sympathy strikes in California, Illinois, New York and Connecticut.
Many unions hope to copy the Houston effort, but that could be difficult because many do not have the skilled organizers that the service employees have. Moreover, not all other industries are as vulnerable to union pressures.
Expanding on the Houston effort, the service employees hope to unionize 4,000 janitors in Atlanta, 2,000 in Phoenix and tens of thousands of shopping mall janitors nationwide. But even the service employees have encountered problems. For instance, their effort to organize 7,000 condominium workers in Miami has stalled because of opposition from the largest property management company there.
Still, the Houston effort has gone more smoothly than union officials had expected.
''We decided that Houston would be the place to bring to bear everything we've built in the last 15 years,'' said Stephen Lerner, director of the Justice for Janitors campaign. ''That would allow us to organize a whole city at once.''


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GRAPHIC: Photos: Ercilia Sandoval with her daughters Jennifer, 4, and Genesis, 7, and Flora Aguilar, right, say they struggle to make ends meet as office cleaners in Houston. Janitors in the city typically earn $5.25 an hour. (Photographs by Michael Stravato for The New York Times)(pg. A14)