Janitors Tie Up Downtown as Strike Enters Its Second Day

Striking janitors ratcheted up their offensive Tuesday in Day 2 of a countywide strike, with marches tying up downtown Los Angeles traffic during the morning commute and lunch hour, and pickets going up in front of Burbank and Glendale high-rises.

County supervisors voted 3 to 2 to support the strikers Tuesday morning, and urged building owners who contract for janitorial services to intervene. The Los Angeles City Council passed a similar resolution last week.

“This city and this county are experiencing unprecedented economic growth and there’s no reason in the world why people who sweep our buildings and clean our toilets can’t be given a decent, livable wage,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who proposed the motion.

Janitors, who are demanding a $1 per hour annual raise for the next three years, overwhelmingly rejected a final offer from contractors at a boisterous rally Monday morning. The 18 contractors involved in the negotiations, including several large national building maintenance firms, had offered some workers an immediate 50-cent raise but wanted to freeze wages the first year for others.

The strike began at downtown office buildings Monday night, and was set to build through the week to include the entire county on Friday. An all-day “pilgrimage” through the county is planned for Friday, and union leaders said other unionized workers would join sections of the march.

Mike Garcia, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1877, said 95% of janitors working in downtown Los Angeles walked off the job Monday night.

But Dick Davis, a lead negotiator for the janitorial firms, disputed that figure. “I think that’s a little high,” he said. Davis said contractors used managers and replacement workers. “We didn’t miss a building,” he said.

Tensions ran high Monday night as supervisors hustled in vanloads of replacement workers while police held back the protesters. Both sides in the dispute said no further talks have been scheduled.

Garcia said that janitors would continue to stay off the job at downtown offices Tuesday night, including those of the Los Angeles Times, and that those working in Burbank, Glendale and Warner Center would join them.

A United Parcel Service driver turned away from the Gas Co. building downtown Tuesday night in honor of the pickets, and strikers there said they hoped to prevent trash pickup this morning.

Tuesday’s marches were orderly and peaceful, although they drew large numbers of protesters. The largest gathering began at noon, when more than 3,000 marchers jammed Bunker Hill and moved to the Public Library at Hope and 5th, where they briefly sat on the street.

Earlier in the day, about 9 a.m., dozens of protesters blocked the downtown exits of the Pasadena Freeway. They then marched to county offices, where they appeared to support the resolution.

At that meeting, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke recalled that her father was a union janitor working in Hollywood studios in the 1920s. “I’m here only as a result of the actions by unions who made sure there were decent wages,” said Burke, to applause from about 50 janitors in the audience. Garcia said janitors today make $5 an hour less in inflation-adjusted dollars than those in Burke’s father’s day.

But Supervisor Don Knabe, one of the board’s two Republicans, said it was “inappropriate for us to enter into someone else’s fight” and warned that the board’s action was risky, given its own looming battles with employees’ unions over raises.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich called the resolution “pandering to unions.”

But Supervisor Gloria Molina noted that the county last year adopted a living wage policy--with a minimum $8.32 hourly wage for all insured employees--in an effort to prod private businesses to follow their lead. The resolution, she said, is in line with that policy.

After the supervisors approved the resolution, the janitors erupted in cheers and marched out of the board room chanting “Si, se puede”--or “Yes, it can be done.”