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CleanPower: The Wal-Mart of the Cleaning Services Industry
SEIU Local 1 Janitors March on Justice for Janitors Day to Demand Union Rights at CleanPower
by John-David Morgan
June 24, 2005
As nearly 100 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) janitors, organizers, and community and labor allies marched to the Blatz Luxury Apartments in Milwaukee June 15 to demand justice for CleanPower janitors, shouts of “Si Se Puede” (“Yes We Can”) resounded throughout the city’s downtown.
CleanPower Janitors in Madison have been fighting for nearly a year to join SEIU Local 1 – in the face of CleanPower resistance and worker intimidation. On national Justice for Janitors Day June 15, organizers of the Madison CleanPower campaign and their supporters in Milwaukee, including representatives from five other Milwaukee unions, marched to the Blatz – a building complex cleaned by CleanPower – to send the message that the fight to unionize CleanPower has only just begun.
CleanPower, a subsidiary of St. Paul (MN)-based Marsden Bldg. Maintenance, cleans 44 percent of commercial office space in the Madison area and 33 percent of office space in suburban Milwaukee, as well as a few buildings in downtown Milwaukee. CleanPower janitors are typically denied full-time status, and, as a result, have no real access to health care insurance. According to records obtained by SEIU, CleanPower pays, on average, $7.50 per hour, well below the wages paid to unionized janitors.
“The only way to make things better for us CleanPower workers is through the union," said Tina Campbell, who has worked at CleanPower for three years, without a raise and without health insurance for her and her son.
“It’s difficult enough being a single mother,” she told the crowd in an emotional speech in the Blatz courtyard. “We have tried to get a union, and because we’ve tried, CleanPower has harassed and intimidated me. … All we want is a union like you have here.”
“CleanPower has become the Wal-Mart of the cleaning services industry in Wisconsin,” declared SEIU Local 1’s Leone Jose Bicchieri, the organizer of the CleanPower campaign. “Through a collective bargaining agreement with CleanPower, we can significantly improve the lives of many families who are struggling to survive here in southern and southeastern Wisconsin.”
Lack of respect on the job is an issue for many CleanPower janitors.
"I have worked too long at CleanPower for too little money,” said Russell McDaniels, a CleanPower janitor for two years. “I deserve to be treated with much more respect at my job, and I think union representation will help me get that respect.”
The campaign to organize CleanPower is intensifying this summer. Bicchieri arrived in Madison earlier this year to open and head SEIU Local 1’s new organizing offices at 1421 S. Park St., across the street from the Labor Temple. Bicchieri is working with the South Central Labor Federation and community groups, such as Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice, to strengthen the organizing effort. This summer, CleanPower workers and the union are forming community-based delegations to advance talks with management at a half dozen office buildings contracting with CleanPower.
In addition, SEIU Local 1 organizers are asking fellow union members and community supporters to put in a call to CleanPower President Jeffrey Packee at the Madison CleanPower offices, to ask why Packee “doesn’t respect the rights of janitors to better their lives and provide health care insurance for their families.”
The June 15 rally and march in Milwaukee was one of many held on “J for J Day” by SEIU locals in major cities across the United States to recognize the hard work of the nation’s janitors, who have been one of the fastest growing unionized workforces in the U.S. for more than a generation. By organizing into unions, janitors have won improved working conditions, better pay and gained access to health insurance.
"Janitors who clean buildings in the evening are often an invisible workforce in our society,” Bicchieri said. “Many of these cleaning workers are earning poverty-level wages and are not allowed to work full-time.”
Joining janitors in solidarity in Milwaukee were representatives from five fellow unions and labor groups: SEIU Local 150, UNITE-HERE (the hotel and restaurant workers union), the Steelworkers union, the Machinists union and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As they marched, Teamsters Local 200 members honked support from behind the wheels of their trucks. Also speaking at the rally: J for J Day organizer Dave Somerscales of SEIU Local 1, Milwaukee janitor Maxine Shields and Milwaukee County Labor Council/AFL-CIO President John Goldstein.
GET ACTIVE: To join the fight for union rights for CleanPower workers, stop by the new SEIU Local 1 office at 1421 S. Park Street in Madison, or contact Leone Jose Bicchieri at 608-257-0065. For CleanPower and its president, Jeffrey Packee, a call in Madison, dial 608-242-1500. Ask Mr. Packee why he refuses to respect the union rights of his workers.
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