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Janitors: Tentative Agreement on Wages, Benefits, Four-Year Pact for L.A. County
On May 12th, Janitors announced a major breakthrough in contract negotiations at a press conference with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and Robert F. Maguire III, CEO of Maguire Properties, Inc. For the first time ever, 6,700 janitors in Los Angeles and Orange counties will have one master contract. Previously, there were two separate contracts for each county that both expired April 30.
"This will help us to provide for our families in the way we want to, just to have a safe, decent place to live and make it possible for our children to have a better future," said Grey Pichinte, a janitor and member of the contract bargaining committee, comprised of Los Angeles and Orange County janitors. "Today we won justice for all janitors in Los Angeles and we will keep fighting until we win for Orange County and statewide." The janitors' union SEIU Local 1877 represents 20,000 janitors from San Diego to the Silicon Valley and all the way up to Sacramento; all are currently in contract negotiations.
The announcement came just days after janitors voted overwhelmingly to approve an unfair labor practice strike and began staging walkouts on Wednesday, May 7 after round-the-clock contract negotiations broke down. At that time, the cleaning companies and their corporate clients had refused to adequately raise wages for janitors who clean some of the most expensive office buildings in the entire country. The contractor's proposal would have forced the majority of union janitors into second-class status, which was unacceptable to the janitors' union.
The tentative agreement will begin to bring Los Angeles janitors out of second-class status and raise wages from $22,256 to $26,728 a year by the end of the four-year pact. Janitors that work in downtown and Century City will see their wages jump from $24,960 to $29,328 a year when the contract expires, April 30, 2012.
Janitors will continue to receive full employer-paid family healthcare, a pension, and now, for the first time, they will receive vision coverage. Janitors that work on the outskirts of the county will now be able to move into higher-paying buildings and earn better benefits based on seniority, once the contract is ratified.
