Janitors in San Francisco hit the streets in force this week, filling Downtown with consecutive days of picket signs, marches, and the furious noise of protest.
It’s the latest development in a fight over a union contract that janitorial workers say is a crucial fork in the road, as they grapple with job losses driven by office buildings sitting vacant in the wake of the pandemic.
On Wednesday, a crowd of more than 150 workers gathered at the plaza just outside Salesforce Tower, passing out picket signs and banners before embarking on a march west on Mission Street. Cries of “No contract, no peace!” and “Arriba la unión!” rang out across the pavement; one man blew excitedly into a small vuvuzela, punctuating the chants with his shrieking horn.
“Everything is expensive right now. Food, rent, just living in SF is hard. Almost impossible. I have two children, and I need to support them and my family. And health insurance, to pay for yourself, it’s too expensive. So, if you get just $20 or $30 per hour, it’s not enough,” says Jamie Piñeda, who works for ABM at the Dropbox office in Mission Bay. “And as we say: ‘One job should be enough.’”
The rally follows one on Tuesday, when dozens of workers picketed in front of office buildings blocks away on Market Street.
The union, SEIU Local 87, is bargaining with a coterie of heavy-hitting employers, including facility management firms like ABM Industries and Able Services, that oversee janitorial services in some 600 buildings across the city. The current contract, ratified in 2020, is set to expire on July 31. Negotiations have bogged down due to, predictably, disagreements over increased wages and benefits, says Noelia Linares, a representative of SEIU Local 87.
One key demand: Union leaders want employers to shift from a three-tier wage structure, based on seniority, to a fair wage across the board, according to Linares. The union is also lobbying for more paid sick days, sexual harassment protections, safety measures in workplaces, and better treatment of laid-off workers.
Linares claims that some buildings have even been shutting off their ventilation and A/C systems in the evenings, leaving janitors working in sweltering, uncomfortable conditions. “We’ve had people fainting and going to the hospital,” she told Gazetteer.
In a possible escalation, organizers have begun pushing janitors to call in sick en masse on an upcoming, undisclosed day. Union vice president Abdo Hadwan stressed to Gazetteer that any walk-out would not be a union-sanctioned action.
SEIU Local 87 became embroiled in a very similar fight in 2020, organizing rallies, sanctioned walkouts, and fierce negotiations amid a historic economic crash across the U.S. Those negotiations concluded in 2021, with janitorial workers receiving an overall compensation increase of just over four percent.
It hasn’t been enough, said Cecilia Alvarez, who works as a janitor at the eBay office near the Embarcadero.
“We have to have extra jobs to live, and we don’t get respect,” she said at the July 24 rally. “I have to go back to work right now, but I’m here at my lunchtime to sign in and keep fighting.”
