Justice for Janitors in Silicon Valley

UNESCO Courier, Sept, 2000 by Victoria Elliott

And finally, faced with a chorus of protest from other unions, Catholic bishops and local politicians, executives at the biotech firm Genentech and the telecommunications company Pacific Bell were shamed into admitting responsibility for workers they had refused to acknowledge.

The contract the janitors settled in June, without going on strike, was the most generous in the history of the union. It provides for an eight per cent annual increase in their hourly pay over the next three years, from $7.64 or $8.04, depending on which county they work in, to $9.64 or $10.04. But that is hardly going to help them move out of the converted garages they live in, where a small two-bedroom house can fetch $750,000.

After prevailing both in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, the union is now concentrating on the janitors of Sacramento. The expiration of the contracts it has just negotiated has been synchronized, so that in three years, 14,000 janitors across California will be acting in concert.

The dispossessed

Much of the workforce of Silicon Valley is as yet unorganized, from the crews at Internet start-ups who work 14-hour days and camp out in their offices to the lower echelons. In the almost entirely non-unionized "clean rooms" that assemble circuits, Asian workers are often wary of joining a union, sometimes because their immigration status is uncertain.

But among the ranks of the janitors, many of whom are also undocumented, the Mexican tradition of organizing is strong. "They understand the concept of unionization," says Garcia. "They're not confused at all that our powers lie in our ability to come together."

Garcia is anxious to make common cause with the increasingly dispossessed middle classes. The strike, he feels, has helped to turn around the climate of xenophobia that swept through California over proposed anti-immigrant legislation. "People look at immigrants in a much more positive vein today," he says, "as hard-working people trying to advance themselves."

Marianne Steeg, staff director of the South Bay Labor Council, argues that the janitors' strike helped to draw attention to questions of the area's social contract, putting the need for affordable housing, transportation and health care firmly at the top of the political agenda.

"School teachers, firemen, health workers -- so many of our workers who can no longer afford to live here --no longer identify with the upper-middle class, but with the working poor," she says, adding that the strike put a dent in the shining armour of the high-tech firms. "They can no longer claim that the prosperity of Silicon Valley means prosperity for all."

Key indicators

Population (millions, 1998): 274

GNP ($ billions): 7.903

GNP per capita ($): 29,240

Population below income poverty line of $14.40 a day, the norm for industrialized countries (%): 14.1

Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2000