Mall Madness as Janitors Try to Unionize

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



Mall Madness as Janitors Try to Unionize

SEIU is working to organize janitors at shopping centers -- and the cleaning companies they contract with -- around the country.

Megan Tady | October 18, 2007 | web only



While shoppers at Paramus Park Mall in New Jersey push their feet into gleaming new Nikes, untwist salty soft pretzels, and stride past pasty-white plastic mannequins cloaked in fall fashion, janitors are polishing the floors with unease.

As part of a wider campaign to free mall workers from low wages and unfair working conditions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) began organizing janitors employed by the cleaning contractor Service Management Systems (SMS) at Paramus Park. Within weeks, workers say supervisors with SMS threatened to fire anyone who supported the union.

"We work everyday with fear," Christian Valle, a janitor at Permaus Park, told The American Prospect through an interpreter. Valle said he wanted to join the union for "job security" because "sometimes pay us the full hours, they raise their voices at us, and they threaten to fire us so we don't become part of the union."

In July, SEIU filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against SMS, citing interrogation, surveillance, and coercive statements and threats against workers joining the union. SEIU is the nation's largest union, representing more than 225,000 janitors.

The complaint against SMS was just the beginning, as SEIU documented a more systemic practice of intimidation against union-affiliated workers in malls owned by General Growth Properties. In August, SEIU filed six more unfair labor practice charges against cleaning contractors hired by General Growth, and one specifically against the corporation itself. Then in September, SEIU filed 10 more unfair labor practice charges against the company.

Workers allege that at Glendale Galleria in California, one of more than 200 General Growth-owned malls spread throughout 44 states, supervisors of SMS illegally threatened and interrogated employees engaged in union activity.

Several states away, workers at Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree, Colorado, claim that supervisors of the Millard Group, another General Growth cleaning contractor, threatened to reduce wages and forced workers to remove union insignia. SEIU also charges that General Growth officials spied on union representatives.

At the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, Washington, workers again say General Growth's contractor Millard Group threatened and interrogated union-supporting workers, and even illegally fired one employee for her union activity. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=mall_madness_as_janitors_work_to_unionize