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That Time The LAPD Beat The Janitors And Found Themselves Facing ROLLING THUNDER
https://www.wonkette.com/p/that-time-the-lapd-beat-the-janitorsErik Loomis
A good bit of labor history. The "owners" want to take us back way before this, back to a time of indentured servitude and even slavery.
On June 15, 1990, the Los Angeles Police Department beat the ever living hell out 400 striking janitors in Los Angeles who had organized with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Those janitors were trying to secure a contract with International Service Systems (ISS), who had the contract to clean many of the city’s downtown office buildings. Around 90 strikers were wounded and 38 were arrested. This event galvanized support for the janitors and is an important event both in the history of Latino labor in the United States and the growth of SEIU into arguably the most powerful union in the United States during the early 21st century.
In 1983, the average wage for a janitor in Los Angeles surpassed $7 an hour and included health insurance. By 1986, that had plummeted to $4.50 and insurance had disappeared. This happened through a phenomena we are familiar with today —instead of employing their own janitors, building owners began contracting the work out to an outside company that put enormous downward pressure on wages and working conditions. These companies largely hired undocumented workers, especially from Central America, that they thought could control and who had little power to resist. Once again, we see how contracting out work so often leads to downward pressure on wages and working conditions.
What happened in Los Angeles also ravaged SEIU locals around the country. After a 1985 building owner lockout in Pittsburgh, the union looked for a new strategy to fight back. SEIU sought to reverse these losses in 1987 with the Justice for Janitors campaign. The plan, developed primarily by the union organizer and strategist Stephen Lerner, targeted building owners rather than contractors, as they held the real power and could roll the higher costs of treating workers decently into the contract as opposed to a contractor then losing out to a non-union agency if the campaign targeted them. The campaign had early successes in Denver and Atlanta before moving on to the tougher, larger cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC.
It was in Los Angeles that the movement achieved its greatest victories. Local 339 in that city became the center of the national campaign in 1990. Some of this came from the fact that the Central American workers who made up the local’s core already knew social struggle. These were refugees from the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. They were, as a whole, less scared of civil disobedience than native-born workers, despite their undocumented legal status. They had dealt with right-wing assassination squads supported by the Reagan administration in their home countries, so they weren’t so scared of the LAPD.
. . .
In 1983, the average wage for a janitor in Los Angeles surpassed $7 an hour and included health insurance. By 1986, that had plummeted to $4.50 and insurance had disappeared. This happened through a phenomena we are familiar with today —instead of employing their own janitors, building owners began contracting the work out to an outside company that put enormous downward pressure on wages and working conditions. These companies largely hired undocumented workers, especially from Central America, that they thought could control and who had little power to resist. Once again, we see how contracting out work so often leads to downward pressure on wages and working conditions.
What happened in Los Angeles also ravaged SEIU locals around the country. After a 1985 building owner lockout in Pittsburgh, the union looked for a new strategy to fight back. SEIU sought to reverse these losses in 1987 with the Justice for Janitors campaign. The plan, developed primarily by the union organizer and strategist Stephen Lerner, targeted building owners rather than contractors, as they held the real power and could roll the higher costs of treating workers decently into the contract as opposed to a contractor then losing out to a non-union agency if the campaign targeted them. The campaign had early successes in Denver and Atlanta before moving on to the tougher, larger cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC.
It was in Los Angeles that the movement achieved its greatest victories. Local 339 in that city became the center of the national campaign in 1990. Some of this came from the fact that the Central American workers who made up the local’s core already knew social struggle. These were refugees from the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. They were, as a whole, less scared of civil disobedience than native-born workers, despite their undocumented legal status. They had dealt with right-wing assassination squads supported by the Reagan administration in their home countries, so they weren’t so scared of the LAPD.
. . .