The challenge

From the 1960’s until the mid -1980’s, a unionized, relatively well-paid workforce cleaned commercial buildings in Los Angeles. Then building owners began outsourcing their cleaning services to nonunion contractors, who employed Latino immigrants and refugees at minimum wage and sometimes even less. For the Los Angeles Local of the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.), these were hard days. During the 1980’s, membership dropped from 5,000 to 1,800 janitors. Janitorial wages also fell. Anti-immigrant sentiment – particularly against undocumented workers – grew; and in 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, curtailing access to social services and education for the undocumented, although the courts later rejected the proposition. In the early 90’s, the majority of Los Angeles’ janitors were Central American or Mexican immigrants who spoke little or no English. Many lived in small apartments occupied by several families, worked for substandard wages and had no health care benefits.

Seeds of commitment

In the 1980’s, Rivera and Ventura came to the United States from El Salvador; Martínez and Salinas arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico. All found work as janitors in nonunion companies. Eventually, they joined the S.E.I.U., participated in campaigns to bring the union to their companies, and each then was elected shop steward in their respective buildings. With the help of an interpreter, they recently expressed the deep passion that motivates their work. Inequality, they wrote, “affects every part of our lives, immediately and long term. (It affects) our ability to study and learn English, our ability to afford education for our children, reliable transportation, healthy food.” Most janitors have some kind of additional part-time employment cleaning houses or fixing cars, “leaving us with little time to dedicate to the nurturing of our families.” Early on, the four leaders realized that their cause “was much greater than what was happening in Los Angeles.”


Accomplishments

Kamilo Rivera, Dolores Martínez, Rafael Ventura and Marisela Salinas “have been exceptional leaders in the Justice for Janitors movement,” not only in helping their fellow janitors and the union “move the campaign to new levels, but in working with and developing other leaders,” says Triana Silton, building services director for Local 1877 of the S.E.I.U. Through the union, they participated in intensive training and became the Los Angeles leaders of S.E.I.U.’s Justice for Janitors, a 16-year old campaign that began in 1985 in Denver, Colo., moving to Los Angeles in 1987. Within S.E.I.U, Justice for Janitors has attained its own identity and recognition as a force for social change. In 1995, the four Los Angeles leaders helped organize a union contract campaign that resulted in full family medical benefits for all janitors in Los Angeles. In 2000, 100,000 S.E.I.U. janitors in 16 cities across the U.S. pledged to support the larger struggle for a living wage, full-time work and ongoing health coverage. But, that spring, denied acceptable contract terms through negotiations, the Los Angeles janitors became the first to strike. The four leaders galvanized shop stewards and activists from key buildings across the city. “They worked night and day, bringing their children along to marches and picket lines,” recalls Susan Chinn, executive director of the Discount Foundation, a private grant making foundation committed to gaining jobs and living wages for the poor. Chinn adds, “As strike captains, working with Local 1877, they helped shape strategy and coordinated a complex, rolling strike that lasted three weeks. It began in downtown buildings and moved, night by night, across the county. The four strike captains handled relations with the police, media, contractors and building owners. They made sure that food and strike pay were distributed on picket lines. And they were cheerleaders, keeping spirits up day by day.” In April 2000, the strikers won an impressive 22-26 percent wage increase, to be implemented over three years, and protected family health care coverage for 8000 janitors. “But what many say they really won is respect – a new sense of dignity on the job and in their communities,” says Chinn. The S.E.I.U.’s Justice for Janitors campaign has organized 80 percent of the janitors in the Los Angeles area. The four leaders “have served as the example for other immigrant workers across the country,” says Mike García, S.E.I.U. Local 1877 president. “April, 2000 moved forward the plight and the organizing abilities of immigrant workers. The media covered this locally, nationally and internationally. These four leaders were the most charismatic and strategic thinkers of the membership; the significance of these achievements is huge.”


Their leadership style

Two years before the strike, this leadership team was developing its strategy and participating, along with other union leaders, in a series of S.E.I.U. training sessions. When the strike occurred, Rivera, Martínez, Ventura and Salinas “were key in bringing together the community, membership and politicians,” according to García. They met with other unions, representatives of religious communities, building owners, cleaning contractors, and community organizations. Their campaign enlisted the support of more than 50 public officials, including the majority of the Los Angeles City Council, the county Board of Supervisors, California Assembly and Senate members and members of the United States Congress, who signed a statement of principles urging building owners to use responsible janitorial contractors who provide living wages and healthcare benefits. Today, the four leaders continue to conduct regular meetings of over 100 fellow janitors who also act as leaders. “No single one of us is in charge of the others,” the leaders say. “Our work requires us to work as a group. Each of our colleagues and us represent different geographic regions of Los Angeles. In order for us to implement plans or strategies we must first assure that we are all on the same plan …so, for instance, a building tenant in Century City is hearing the same message as a tenant in Glendale.” They also emphasize collaboration among different ethnic communities: “Latino janitors protest at LAX (airport) for the rights of African-American and Filipino security service employees because they know that we are all in the same boat.”


The future

Kamilo Rivera, Dolores Martínez, Rafael Ventura and Marisela Salinas continue to broaden their reach. They take pride in having recruited and trained scores of additional leaders. “After the success of the strike in Los Angeles, janitors decided to bring a better standard of living to the janitors in Orange County as well,” says union coordinator Silton. Rafael Ventura and other janitor leaders took leaves of absences from their jobs to help with their campaign, organizing and moving into action 2,000 janitors who then won a union contract within a year. Silton calls that “record time for an organizing campaign of that magnitude.” Their reach also extends beyond union organizing. “It is no accident that many of those involved in Justice for Janitors are now leaders in the amnesty movement for immigrants,” says Chinn. “We have introduced our Latino immigrants to immigrants from all over the world – showing them that we are part of something bigger.” Rivera, Martínez, Ventura and Salinas offer their own best testament:

“Justice for Janitors has shown the public that most immigrants are hard working people struggling to support their families and contribute to their communities. As thousands of us march in the streets of Los Angeles, instead of being told to go back to where we came from, people are cheering us on.”


More about about the Los Angeles leaders of Justice for Janitors

“They may be the invisible underclass of California's booming economy, but without them the offices of Los Angeles' rich and powerful would be reduced to dust and filth…In an extraordinarily effective rolling strike, the janitors have already disrupted much of downtown Los Angeles…. They have successfully lobbied both the city council and the Los Angeles county board of supervisors. And, in a brilliant propaganda coup, they have guaranteed themselves extensive media coverage by refusing to clean the toilets at the downtown headquarters of the Los Angeles Times.”
– The Independent (London), April 6, 2000

“Los Angeles’ striking janitors have pounded steadily on their central message…The army of unseen workers who vacuum and scrub nightly in many of the city's gleaming office towers should earn enough to support families, says the union, and it's an argument with great moral weight. … The janitors, who work rotten hours, deep into the night, ought to get a better deal. It’s affordable to building owners and the right thing to do.”
– Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2000