On the picket line

Chicago janitors vote to strike

Fed up because their wages haven’t increased in real dollars in more than a decade, members of Service Employees Local 1 in Chicago voted March 31 to strike. The contract for the 13,000 janitors who clean the buildings and office spaces of some of the richest companies in the world expired April 8. Chicago janitors clean about 33,000 miles of office space every night. In spite of their backbreaking labor, the average Chicago janitor is paid about $20,000 less than the estimated annual cost of living for a family of four in the Chicago area. With the third highest poverty rate and the highest rate of racial income disparity of any major city in the U.S., Chicago needs a strong, united strike to give a boost to all low-income workers, particularly those who are people of color and immigrants. No wonder the janitors, when kicking off their campaign for higher wages and better benefits on Feb. 27, marched to a Chase Bank. “Chase Bank made $8.5 billion in profits last year. It would take me, or any Chicago janitor who keeps Chase clean, 31 years to make what Chase [racks up in] profits in just one hour,” said janitor Urszula Domaradzki. Stay tuned. (www.seiu1.org, Feb. 27 and March 31)

D.C.-area grocery workers prevent concessions

The 25,000 grocery workers represented by Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 at 126 Safeway and Giant stores in Maryland, northern Virginia and the District of Columbia pushed back hard against the bosses’ demands for concessions. “Our members’ activism and solidarity [are] why they won one of the best collective bargaining agreements in the supermarket industry,” said Tom McNutt, Local 400 president, after the workers ratified the three-year contract on April 3. Being prepared to strike and engaging community support helped Local 400 secure across-the-board wage increases, full funding of health benefits with no increase in members’ out-of-pocket costs, and continued retirement security with all current pension benefits maintained for at least the next 10 years. Another key strategy was publicizing how workers create billions in profits for Safeway and Ahold, the Dutch international conglomerate that owns Giant, at the same time these greedy corporations were demanding the introduction of a lower wage tier for new hires, an increase in health care co-payments and treating Sunday as part of the regular workweek. That kind of winning three-prong strategy should be adopted by all workers struggling for better contracts. (Union City, Metro Washington AFL-CIO Council online newsletter, April 4)

Farm Workers inducted into DOL Hall of Honor

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Farm Workers, UFW pioneers were inducted into the Department of Labor’s Hall of Honor (formerly the Labor Hall of Fame) on March 26. And the auditorium in the DOL building was dedicated to César Chávez, UFW founder and longtime president. Among hundreds of farmworker, labor and community activists attending the ceremony were UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta, current UFW President Arturo Rodríguez and Paul Chávez, César’s middle son and president of the César Chávez Foundation. “My father said that the job of an organizer is to help ordinary people do extraordinary things,” Chávez remarked. A special tribute was made to five UFW activists — Nan Freeman, Nagi Daifalla, Juan De La Cruz, Rufino Contreras and René López — who were killed during UFW strikes. Actor Michael Peña, who will portray the historic labor leader in an upcoming movie, was master of ceremonies. (Union City, March 27)