War of Wages : Low-Paid Janitors, Fighting Status as ‘Invisible Workers,’ Target El Segundo Job Sites

They’re rarely seen, even more rarely heard. They come in after everybody else has quit for the day, and spend the night emptying wastebaskets, vacuuming carpets, mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms. Then they disappear before even the earliest early-bird white collar worker gets into the office in the morning.

They’re janitors, and most people who work in offices probably never give them a first thought, much less a second one.

But from Century City to downtown Los Angeles and now in the South Bay, union organizers and janitors in the “Justice for Janitors” campaign have been giving faces and voices--sometimes angry faces and voices--to society’s most anonymous and often lowest-paid workers. By waving signs, banging drums, even blocking traffic on busy Sepulveda Boulevard, the militant janitors are trying to raise their pay, their benefits and public awareness of their plight.

“Janitors are invisible workers,” says Jono Shaffer, an organizer for Local 399 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 6,000 janitors in L.A. County and which is conducting the Justice for Janitors campaign. “Most people never think about them. They never think about the fact that every night, every square foot of carpet in those luxury office buildings has a vacuum cleaner pushed over it. We’re trying to change that, to get people to pay attention to what’s going on.”

Noon-hour motorists on Sepulveda at Grand Avenue in El Segundo certainly paid attention last Friday, when about 200 janitors and organizers staged a noisy demonstration at the intersection to protest low wages for janitors at the nearby Mattel Toys building and other buildings in the area. The protest ended with the arrest of 10 people, most of them for intentionally blocking traffic on Sepulveda with their bodies.

The target of the demonstration was a Beverly Hills-based company called Advance Building Maintenance, which provides non-union janitorial services on a contract basis for Mattel as well as the nearby LAX Business Center and Hughes Aircraft Co. Protest organizers say Advance pays the 450 or so janitors on its payroll “slave wages”--$4.25 an hour in most cases, the minimum legal wage--and provides no benefits.

The protests continued this week, with anywhere from half a dozen to two dozen demonstrators gathering near the intersection nearly every day. They waved signs--”Respect and Dignity on the Job,” “Could You Live on $4.25 an Hour?”--banged on drums and street sign poles, and urged passing motorists to honk their support. Some motorists did, while others drove by without a glance. The demonstrations this week, though noisy, have not resulted in any arrests.

Arrests and noisy demonstrations are nothing new to the Justice for Janitors campaign.

Three years ago, 40 people were arrested and 16 injured during a clash between police and demonstrating janitors in Century City. Last fall about 500 Justice for Janitors demonstrators staged a loud rally at Toyota Motors headquarters in Torrance, which also has a janitorial services contract with Advance Building Maintenance, leading Toyota executives to denounce the demonstrations as blackmail.

Other Justice for Janitors demonstrations have been staged in Beverly Hills, the mid-Wilshire area and downtown Los Angeles.

One of the demonstrators standing at Sepulveda and Grand this week was Sara Herrera, 33, an immigrant from Guatemala who said she worked for Advance Maintenance for three years at the LAX Business Center. She’s been demonstrating since last month, when she and two dozen other Advance employees walked off the job to protest what they call “unfair labor practices” by the company. Herrera, who has three children, said she earned only $309 every two weeks, after taxes, when she was working for Advance.

“We will stay until we win,” Herrera said in Spanish. “I cannot live and buy food for my children with what they pay.”

Union organizers say a win would consist of an increase in a janitor’s wages to about $6 an hour or more, plus health benefits.

But Advance Building Maintenance chief executive George Vallen said many of his employees already make more than $4.25 an hour--up to $16 an hour for supervisors, he said. But, he added, business pressures make it impossible to pay all his employees higher wages or to provide benefits.

“I’m in a real competitive market,” said Vallen, who added that a lot of people are willing to work for $4.25 an hour.

“When people apply for a minimum-wage job, what do they expect?” Vallen said. “If we need people, they come out of the woodwork. . . . There are an awful lot of people out there who are dying for work.”

Vallen bitterly criticized the Justice for Janitors campaign for what he says are unfair practices against his company, including what he called the efforts to “intimidate” the companies with whom he has contracts, such as Mattel. He accused the union organizers of trying to win by intimidation rather than by trying to get his employees to take a union vote.

“I would welcome a union vote,” Vallen said, adding that he does not think the majority of his employees would vote to unionize. “If they win, fine, I’ll sit down and talk with them. But if they lose, they have to leave me alone, for a while at least.”

Mattel spokeswoman Donna Gibbs said the company pays a flat fee to Advance for janitorial services. “It’s up to them (Advance) to determine what wage rates are paid to their workers,” Gibbs said, adding that Mattel has had a contract for janitorial services with Advance for 15 years, and has no plans to change.

Although Gibbs said Mattel would like to remain impartial in the dispute between Advance and the janitors, she said the company does object to some of the janitors’ tactics--such as refusing to leave the building lobby, and charging that Mattel janitors are subjected to unsafe working conditions.

Shaffer and other organizers of the janitors’ campaign, meanwhile, make no apology for their tactics, saying that traditional unionizing efforts are ineffective in the janitorial industry because of employer intimidation. Militant tactics, on the other hand, have proved successful in some cases, forcing janitorial service companies to sign union contracts in Century City and elsewhere, she said.

“We’re organizing a movement of janitors, not electioneering,” Shaffer said. “We’re committed to peacefully and militantly winning dignity and respect for people who work hard every day. The movement is only going to get bigger.”

Protest organizer Rocio Saenz speaks with a police officer about a janitors’ demonstration outside the Mattel offices in El Segundo.