With their contract set to expire on Sunday, a group of about 50
Chicago-based SEIU Local 1 janitors, who were joined by members from community organizations, held a press conference Wednesday morning to
publicly call for higher wages and an increase in health benefits.
Taking
place on the 44th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights
leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the janitors and their supporters
aimed to connect their rally to King’s backing of a union sanitation
workers’ strike in April 1968.
“Forty-four years later we
stand in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. advocating, calling upon
those who have responsibility here to provide janitors … with justice, a
wage that will allow them to support their families with benefits that
will provide for them everything a family needs,” Rev. Calvin Morris, a
civil rights activist who worked with Dr. King, said at the conference.
The
Local 1 contract, which will continue to be negotiated Thursday for
suburban janitors and Friday for Chicago-based janitors, will affect
about 22,000 members in 11 cities, with about 13,000 of those custodians
currently working in Chicago.
The group, including SEIU Local 1
President Tom Balanoff, did not to give specific numbers regarding
what they’re looking for in a wage increase, but laid out its position
in a press release. According to the release, Local 1 janitors in
Chicago average earn about $31,000 annually. The average yearly cost of
living for a family of four in Chicago, according to the Economic Policy Institute, is about $48,800.
“In
terms of wages there is a far gap between where we’re at and where BOMA
and the contractors are,” Balanoff said. “We are looking for a good
wage that will not push us into poverty downtown and will pull us out of
poverty in the suburbs.”
Here's more from today's press conference:
The Building Owners and Managers
Association of Chicago, or BOMA, is one of two organizations with which
Local 1 representatives are negotiating for wage increases. While BOMA
is the main contractor for union janitors in the city, a group of
individual private contractors in the surrounding suburbs is also
negotiating the same contract with Local 1.
While a
representative from BOMA did not return a phone call in time for this
story, BOMA Executive Vice President Michael Cornicelli told the Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday that he was “cautiously optimistic” that the two groups would come to an agreement.
But
if an agreement is not reached the union janitors, who clean the
offices of some of Chicago’s most successful businesses and large corporations, such as JP
Morgan Chase – which received about $34.7 million in state tax breaks last year – are prepared to go on strike, after authorizing one with a vote last Sunday.
“We
try hard, but we can’t make ends meet with the salary we make,” said
Mae McLenin, a janitor who works for Chicago Public Schools. “We scrape
floors, we dust, we move furniture, and we come to work every day. We
can’t afford to take a day off.”
* The SEIU Illinois Council sponsors this web site.
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