The Workers Center-Union Partnership That’s Transforming Big-Box Janitorial Work

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17497/a_workers_center_union_partnership_in_minnesota_is_transforming_big_box_jan




Striking janitors and their supporters outside a Minneapolis Target in 2013. (Fibonacci Blue / Flickr)

The last few years have seen significant labor unrest among the cleaning staff of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota’s big box stores. Janitors cleaning these stores have leafleted, protested, marched, struck and even gone on hunger strike since 2010, when workers first began organizing with CTUL (the Center for Workers United in Struggle), a workers center in Minneapolis. At that time, most janitors earned around $7.25 an hour and say they faced pervasive wage theft. Today, they say, their rates are between $8.50 and $9.00 an hour, wage theft is rare, and working conditions have improved.

Now, the janitors are taking a step beyond their agitation through the workers center by trying to form a union.

In November 2014, janitors at Kellermeyer Bergensons Services (KBS) won a card check neutrality agreement with their employer. The agreement gives janitors the right to organize a union without employer intimidation and allows the workers to form the union through signing a majority of union cards rather than through a secret ballot election (a process which unions say bosses exploit to intimidate workers and avoiding a union).

This agreement comes shortly after KBS received a contract to clean Best Buy’s Twin Cities metro stores, beating out incumbent cleaning contractor Diversified Maintenance. The change in contractors occurred just before a planned Black Friday strike by the janitors over working conditions. Workers with Diversified Maintenance in Best Buy stores had participated in three previous strikes over unfair labor practices in the past year. KBS signed the card check agreement just in time to avert a fourth strike at Best Buy stores.

FULL story at link.