“We are striking for better pay,” said Gleny Pichado, using a megaphone to lead workers chanting on the picket line. Many workers are paid as low as $6 an hour. “We need health insurance, more holidays, sick days, and benefits,” she said.

Most of those on the picket line are immigrant workers from Latin America, largely women. They work in the section of the plant where they clean laundry for hospitals and hotels. It is the hottest part of the facility, with temperatures often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Pichado’s picture appeared prominently in the Washington Post along with an article in the big-business daily on a lunchtime rally the workers and their supporters held outside the plant August 29. “When the boss saw my picture in the paper he gave me three days off. But we will stay out as long as it takes,” said Pichado.

Union organizers said that the company has threatened retaliatory action including revoking its “sponsorship” of a number of immigrant workers. Some of the truck drivers for the company are on parole and must be employed as a condition of their release. The company has brought in 20-30 day laborers as scabs. “We have to deal with a number of things,” Kenneth Middleton, who operates industrial washers and dryers, told Militant reporters. He has worked in the plant for one year and now makes $6.15 per hour. “We have to handle hypodermic needles. There is blood and feces in the sheets. And we have never been told that the company must provide us with hepatitis vaccinations,” Middleton added.

“We have worked too hard, too long, for a little bit of money,” said another worker with 10 years in the plant, who only identified herself as Evelyn. “If we didn’t go on strike, the owner wouldn’t take us seriously.” She makes $8.50 an hour and pays $119 a week for the family health-care plan. Evelyn works in the dry cleaning department and was sitting with one of her co-workers, Loraina, and Omar, who works in the washer room, both of whom speak Spanish. Pointing to them she explained that while she speaks very little Spanish, they all have figured out how to communicate with each other.

Being treated with respect by management was also a central issue for the strikers. Several UNITE placards included hand-written slogans reading, “For Respect and Dignity,” in English and Spanish.

“They don’t have any respect for us,” said Sixta Reding, who makes $6.50 an hour. “They treat us like stepchildren,” added Middleton. Reding felt that getting medical coverage was an important goal of the strike to win a union.

A Washington Post article quoted the owner comparing the workers to cows. This angered workers who said they are human beings not animals. Workers said this was a typical type of comment from the owner.

A substantial challenge facing strikers is the hiring policy of the boss, which aims to divide recent Latin American immigrants from African Americans. Many Blacks work in the dry cleaning section and did not join the picket line. They are also paid somewhat higher wages. A number of Black workers were on the line, however—some chanting in Spanish.

UNITE union members and their supporters who have come in from around the region to back the fight for a union at Sterling participated in the August 29 rally in front of the plant. Other unionists from Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania joined them. Among them were workers in other laundries, garment and textile shops, machine parts plants, and a clothing distribution center.

Those on the August picket line broke into cheers as dozens of workers poured out of the plant for the action during their lunch break. Many joined the picket line, donning UNITE T-shirts, carrying pro-union signs, and chanting for the union. Others sat on the side grass, watching and listening. The protesters marched behind a bed sheet painted to read, “Shame on Sterling Sweatshop.” They shook noisemakers, banged drums, and chanted in English and Spanish. “What do we want?” a unionist with a bullhorn bellowed. “Union!” a few dozen pickets yelled back. “When do we want it?” he asked. “Now!” the workers replied.

These workers are fighting for a union on the heels of the organizing victory by UNITE at Linens of the Week here, where laundry workers won union representation and a contract as part of a nationwide success. “The rent goes up, the bus goes up, the food goes up—why don’t our wages go up?” asked Enuce Taveras, 57, originally from the Dominican Republic, who folds clothes at Sterling for an hourly wage of $6.15 per hour. “We want at least $8 an hour.”

According to the Washington Post, company owner Eugene Jacobsen claims he can’t pay “unskilled workers” more than the minimum wage, which is $6.15 an hour in Washington, D.C. “I’ve got to compete with companies in Maryland and Virginia,” the boss was quoted as telling the Post.

A giant inflatable rat, a symbol of resistance to the bosses’ anti-union drive, was brought to the rally. “It represents a rat employer,” Mario Rodríguez, a UNITE organizer, told the press. “You know, an employer who mistreats workers.”

Nancy Boyasko and Janice Lynn contributed to this article.  
 
 
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