Global News Wire (The Record--Hackensack), February 2, 2006, Thursday

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February 2, 2006 Thursday

HEADLINE: NEW JERSEY UNION EFFORT CROSSES THE ATLANTIC TO LOBBY SANOFI HEADQUARTERS

BYLINE: Hugh R. Morley

BODY:
Think of it as globalization union-style.
After months of pushing French drug giant Sanofi-Aventis to raise the wages of 120 office cleaners at its U.S. headquarters in Bridgewater, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ has taken the fight to a new battleground: the company's home turf.
A union representative in Paris is reaching out to French unions that represent Sanofi employees, asking them to lobby the drug company on behalf of the workers.
The move is the latest tactic in SEIU's four-year effort to organize low-paid janitors around New Jersey -- many of them immigrants. Often, as in the Sanofi case, the union targets the building occupant as well as the cleaning contractor, believing a prominent corporation will be more sensitive to pressure.
The foray abroad, which began last October, reflects what experts say is a growing willingness by organized labor -- as it faces declining support in the United States -- to expand overseas.
"Companies are becoming more globally connected," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Research Education at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "They are moving work [abroad] and using their global power to shift work more than ever before."
In response, she said, unions are trying to create global networks to increase their power -- by organizing workers wherever a target company has a presence.
SEIU's Paris representative, Nick Allen, said that since he began working on Sanofi two big French unions -- Confederacion Francais Democratique de Travail and Confederation Generale de Travail -- have taken up the cause.
"The issue has been raised repeatedly with [Sanofi] management," he said from Paris. "I know that management has expressed a lot of concern at the situation."
The campaign -- which has attracted coverage by two French newspapers -- has gained traction from the fact that Sanofi projects itself as socially responsible in France, Allen said. SEIU claims that Sanofi's private cleaning contractor in Bridgewater -- Kenilworth-based City Cleaning Contractors -- refuses to recognize the union and threatens employees who seek to organize, allegations the company denies.
"The behavior that they are exhibiting in New Jersey would be totally unacceptable in France," Allen said. "My job is to liaison with our partners here to make sure they are armed with all the facts and that they understand what their company is tolerating overseas."
On Monday, the union distributed leaflets about the workers' situation outside Sanofi's U.S. headquarters in Bridgewater.
Company spokesman Marc Greene said Sanofi struck a deal with the contractor in September that required they pay the prevailing wage at the drug-maker's expense. He said the company also pays for full- and part-time workers to get health benefits.
"We are a health-care company," Greene said.
"We make very effort to make sure that the people who do work for us are treated well."
Still, the union has not achieved its goal. City Cleaning Contractors reamins non-union. And although the company raised wages by $1 an hour to $8, it won't pay the $9.75 paid by unionized contractors in Somerset County, the union says.
Brad Weiner of City Cleaning Contractors said he believes that the pay and benefits are in line with other area contractors. He said he believes that the union's main concern is that his company is not unionized. But the workers aren't interested in that, he said.
The French unions did not respond to a request from The Record for comment.
SEIU has organized cleaners across the country for more than 15 years in a high-profile campaign called "Justice for Janitors." The union says it has organized 5,000 workers in New Jersey since 2001, increasing their pay and getting them health benefits and paid vacation.
SEIU officials say their efforts abroad include pressuring London-based Group Four/Securicor to recognize unions for security guards in Indonesia, South Africa, Uruguay and other countries. Allen worked with French unions to pressure cleaning contractor Group Services France to allow 400 janitors to unionize in Indianapolis.
Bronfenbrenner said unions have sporadically tried organizing workers overseas for decades, mostly in times of a serious industrial conflict, but now they are now doing it routinely.
One of the more successful efforts involved workers at the Secaucus warehouse of Swedish retailer H&M in 2003, she said. It began after they claimed that employees injured on the job were fired. About the same time, factory workers making H&M clothes in Thailand claimed that they were mistreated, Bronfenbrenner said.
Eventually, the company accepted the UNITE textile workers union in Secaucus after worker protests in Sweden, Secaucus and Thailand, she said.
"The companies and the economy are more and more global, and the only way to win in this environment is with global unions," Stephen Lerner, director of SEIU's property service division, said.
"We are doing more of this every day."