This Week in Poverty: Justice for Janitors and Low-Wage Workers

http://www.thenation.com/blog/168293/week-poverty-justice-janitors-and-low-wage-workers

Last week I reported that janitors in Houston reached an impasse in their month-long effort to renegotiate their expiring contract with cleaning contractors. The janitors are currently paid an hourly wage of $8.35 and earn an average of $8,684 annually. They seek a raise to $10 an hour over the next three years, but the contractors offered just a $0.50 pay raise phased in over five years.

In response, the janitors began asking building owners and tenants to intervene on their behalf—especially since the cleaning contractors claimed that those corporations were unwilling to cover higher wages, so their hands were tied.

Indeed 3,200 janitors in the city clean the offices of some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world. Surely these powerbrokers could influence the outcome of any negotiations? Yet despite janitors sharing their personal stories of struggling in poverty and asking for help from the likes of Chevron, ExxonMobil, Wells Fargo, Shell, JPMorgan Chase and real estate giants like Crescent Real Estate Equities (a subsidiary of Barclay’s) and Hines Real Estate, no party stepped forward as hoped.

“I went to speak to the owner of my building, Crescent, and the only response we got was the chief of security saying ‘I don’t care,’?” said janitor Maria Teresa Lopez. “We know we are not important to these cleaning companies. They know we live paycheck to paycheck, yet our paychecks are often late by days.”