On strike

The current janitorial strike in Boston is, in part, a direct result of the efforts put forth by workers and students at Tufts and Harvard. Without the progress gained on our campus and at Harvard, we would not be at the historical point in which we find ourselves today. Student support has been crucial throughout this campaign, and now is not the time to distance ourselves.

The Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 254 is at it again. Nearly two thousand janitors are on strike in Boston demanding higher wages and health benefits of their custodial employers-most are employed by UNICCO. They have been on strike for over a week after negotiations between the union and UNICCO management broke down. But how did this happen? Where did it come from? It didn't just fall out of the sky.

Several years ago the janitorial staff that worked at Tufts were direct employees of the university and received a decent salary. Then, following a national trend among universities, Tufts decided that they would fire their janitorial staff, hire a cleaning company to manage the work, and have them rehire the same janitors at a significantly lower wage. How is that for active citizenship?

There was some action around this issue at Tufts, but students remained largely out of the picture at this point. The advocacy really came from the janitorial staff themselves, Somerville and Medford residents, and some Tufts faculty members. There were also internal problems within the union that impeded the progress of the labor movement.

A few years later, student activism at Tufts began to pick up, peaking in the fall of 2000 with the Tufts Students Against Discrimination (TSAD) sit-in at Bendetson Hall. Concurrently, Harvard students were waging their campaign to try to get their university to pay Harvard janitors a wage that they could live on. The students at Harvard took notice of the successful sit-in at Tufts and asked some of the Tufts students for help and advice on their own campaign. One night a group of Tufts students who took part in the sit-in went to a meeting of the Harvard Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) to share the experiences they had with the Tufts campaign and sit-in.

It was not too long after that many Tufts students became involved in the Harvard living wage campaign. Some stayed more connected than others. Some helped in the planning stages of their own sit-in while others simply attended the rallies. Late in the spring semester of 2001, PSLM conducted a sit-in at Massachusetts Hall on the Harvard campus. One Tufts student even joined their ranks inside the building. They were successful in establishing a task force to review the issue. Seven months later, Harvard janitors finally did get a raise that was retroactive to the time of the sit-in negotiations.

That summer, the labor movement began to brew at Tufts. The contract between the union, SEIU Local 254, and the janitorial service providing company, OneSource, was going to end and negotiations for a new contract were to take place. The union had reshuffled its players and was ready to stand up to the OneSource management on behalf of their employees. Throughout the summer and into the fall of 2001, Tufts students, faculty, janitorial staff, Harvard students, and union organizers worked to earn the janitors a decent contract with the company. After several rallies, marches, negotiation meetings between the union and OneSource, meetings with Tufts administrators, and some mild direct action during Parents Weekend, Tufts janitors finally won that battle. This set the stage for what is occurring right now.

Now, the master contract is up for grabs. It is no small cake-this is where the real battle is. This contract controls the minimum standards for more specific site contract negotiations in the greater-Boston area. Making gains on this contract helps all 11,000 janitors represented by SEIU Local 254.

Janitors have been on strike for over a week, and students have been participating in direct action with janitors-including a sit-in at the Callaghan Tunnel that resulted in 26 arrests, and community members have been very supportive. UNICCO, which owns 30 percent of the cleaning market in Boston and employs many of the janitors that are currently on strike, has been the most hard-lined on this issue. Cleaning companies do not want to grant health benefits to employees who work under 29 hours a week. The union is asking them to drop that number to 27.5 hours a week and to allow any janitor to sign up for that many hours if they choose to.

The union says that if they get their way, it would mean the difference between many small jobs at low wages with no health insurance and enough good jobs for union members with health insurance and a salary that can support a family. The lack of affordable housing and astronomically high housing costs in Boston make it difficult for janitors to make a living.

It is important that students maintain their support for the nearly 2,000 janitors that are on strike. There is a Boston-wide student movement working on these important labor issues. Students really do have a lot of power to make a difference in people's lives. It does not take much effort and the rewards are great for the workers and their families.



@s:On strike