The strike by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, which began April 3, has grown to include some 8,500 janitors who work downtown and in outlying areas.

With visible and noisy picket lines, confident marches, and mobilizations, the strikers are getting across the message about their fight to reverse a low pay structure and strengthen their union. They have received support unparalleled in years.

Contracts for janitors in other major cities, such as Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Portland, Oregon, are also expiring. The strike here is therefore being watched closely by the bosses in those cities.

The size and unity of the strike is in itself a conquest. Some 70 percent of the county's office space, including most of downtown Los Angeles and Century City, is now unionized. In the mid-1980s the city's building maintenance industry fired almost all the unionized workforce of mainly Black workers, who earned $7.32 an hour, and hired immigrants, many undocumented, at $3.35 an hour.

Through successful battles in the 1990s to organize janitors, who are 98 percent immigrant and 55 percent women, the SEIU grew from 1,500 to 8,500 members. They have fought harassment by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, threats of deportation, and a cop riot against a peaceful march in 1990 at Century City.

Their battle is symbolic of the place immigrant workers through their struggles have earned in the labor movement.

Nonunion janitors typically receive the $5.75 minimum wage while union workers receive from $6.80 to $7.90 an hour. The union is demanding a $1-an-hour wage increase for each of the three years of the contract. Last year they won full family health benefits. At current wages, union janitors working all year at full shifts earn under $16,700, the figure the federal government sets as the poverty level for a family of four. Los Angeles janitors are among the lowest paid in the nation.

The 18 janitorial firms struck by the SEIU, including American Building Management and One-Source, both of which hire tens of thousands of janitors nationwide, tried to avert a strike by offering wage increases for only certain workers in the most highly unionized areas of the city. The offer totaled only half what the union is demanding, and more than 50 percent of the janitors would not receive any increase for the first year.  
 

Deepening solidarity

SEIU leaders described the offer as an attempt to divide the membership. Hector Jimenez told a cheering crowd of 3,000 the day before the strike, "What they don't realize is that we are united, and we will have the last word." Janitor Victoria Marquez, who cleans buildings in Beverly Hills, said, "I have three children. How am I going to give them a decent education on $6.80 an hour in Beverly Hills?"

The SEIU has established a $1 million strike fund to help cover workers' rents and emergency expenses. The L.A. County Federation of Labor began distributing groceries, pledging a bag a week to each striker. The Teamsters union, representing UPS and sanitation workers, told their members to honor the picket lines, thus no deliveries nor trash pick-up. The Building Trades Council announced that they would not cross the picket lines to do building repair or construction. Operating Engineers Local 501, representing workers who maintain building equipment, followed suit.

"I want them to get better wages so that they can have a better standard of living," said Bixx Richardson, a Mexican immigrant who belongs to Operating Engineers Local 501. "I used to be a janitor and you would not believe the work you have to do and the equipment that you have to operate to do that job. My union supports them all the way because we know what they have to put up with."

A janitor who worked downtown for 25 years said, "You have to stand for something. If you sit at home waiting for someone to do it for you, you will never get anything. We have a lot more support this time than we did before. Then we were trying to get the union in. Now we are fighting to get a contract we can live with. Besides more money, how we are treated is important too. People think that because we are janitors they can look down on us. Well they can't, we have rights too."

Almost daily marches and rallies of up to 3,000 have won deeper public support. On one of the marches through downtown, construction workers stopped work, waved, and raised their fists as the red shirts marched by chanting, "Si, se puede," [Yes, we can!].

A few local politicians have announced their support for the strike. Jesse Jackson marched at the head of one action of 2,000 through downtown. The rally was videotaped and sent to union members in a dozen cities where the SEIU has contracts set to expire. Following the march, union officials organized limited civil disobedience, such as blocking streets and downtown freeway on/off ramps. Some 20 participants were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly.

An all day Pilgrimage for Justice April 7 was the high point of the week. Thousands of strikers converged on Century City. Small groups of other unionists participated, including the teachers union. This year contracts expire for teachers, county workers, and others totaling 250,000 workers.

Annie Durazo of SEIU Local 250 from Fresno, California, joined the action. She is organizing home-care workers and volunteered to come to Los Angeles for two weeks to help the strike. More than 70,000 home-care workers were organized into the SEIU last year in Los Angeles county. "Workers deserve a better wage, they are getting nothing," she said. "They get no respect or dignity. The same situation faces home-care workers. My obligation was to come and help."

High school students also rallied with the strikers. Eric Rivas from Belmont High said in an interview that the janitors "are fighting for a good cause. My friends' parents are janitors and they need a raise." Rivas has been involved in high school walkouts against Proposition 209, a referendum passed two years ago to end affirmative action programs statewide.

Lively discussions around the city among working people at Boeing, the meatpacking plant Farmer John's, the airport, offices, and in the schools point to the popular support for this strike and identification with immigrant workers. This is also reflected in the pages of La Opinion, which ran a headline, "Solidarity with Strikers."

Four food banks have been set up around the county for strikers. Volunteers and strikers prepare 3,000 meals a day, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. "Here I am working harder than in cleaning offices, but for the struggle it doesn't matter," said Estela Cerén at one of the centers.

"They deserve a raise. Everything is going up but our pay. Why are the rich getting richer and when the poor want a raise they don't want to give it to them. I plan on joining the pickets and demonstrations," said Charles Fisher, a ramp worker and member of the Machinists union at Northwest airlines.

Mark Friedman is a member of the International Association of Machinists.  
 
 
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