They clean some of the tallest buildings in the city, but make some of its lowest wages. Now, they’re pushing for more.
Workers with Cincinnati’s SEIU Local 1 union rallied on Fountain Square to kick off a campaign pressing for a $15 minimum wage for the union’s roughly 600 members, many of whom work cleaning the buildings of entities such as Fifth Third Bank, Kroger, some Hamilton County agencies and other large employers.
The union’s contract with those employers expires at the end of this year and union members say they want a better deal.
Local SEIU workers make as little as $11.05 an hour for their efforts, an amount that qualifies many for public assistance, the union says, and isn’t enough to pay for necessities or raise a family.
Janitor and SEIU member David Dean has worked in the Atrium II office building downtown for almost two-and-a-half years. He says he works hard and never misses a shift, but doesn’t make enough to get by.
“I only eat once a day,” he said. “That’s how I eat. I have to survive day to day like that to make sure my bills are taken care of.”
Maria Lorenzo of Price Hill has been an SEIU member for almost a decade. She makes $11.05 cleaning a local medical facility.
“With these wages, I cannot afford to pay a mortgage, save money for retirement or pay my bills on time,” she said.
Doris Jones, an SEIU member from Indianapolis, says the union has won victories in that city with similar campaigns that included protests and hard bargaining.
Not long ago, she said, she was making just $9.85 an hour. But continued efforts by the union won employees in Indianapolis a new contract in November last year that included an 18 percent wage increase, health benefits, more full-time jobs and other improvements.
“Two years ago, my coworkers and I were at a crossroads,” she said. “We had seen several years with small wages, no health care and not a lot of hope. We faced a choice — continue down the same path and get more of the same, or make a real commitment to organizing our workplace and our communities and demanding a contract that makes a real difference in our lives… Today, I’ve been able to buy a car, get a house, have health insurance. All that happened because of the union contract we won last year.”
The effort to push for a $15 an hour minimum wage for SEIU echoes decisions by the City of Cincinnati and companies like Fifth Third to pay their full-time employees that base wage. However, contract employees like janitors aren’t included in those wage increases.
SEIU’s campaign has support from some local leaders, including Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld.
“As some of the big companies in town have raised the wages for their own employees, that’s great, we sincerely applaud that,” Sittenfeld said during brief remarks at the rally today. “But we also say, don’t leave the janitors behind. They’re right there in the same building, working hard, and the attitude needs to be that we’re all on the same team.”
A study last year by progressive-leaning think tank Policy Matters Ohio found that roughly 15,600 people in the Cincinnati Metropolitan Area worked as janitors or cleaning staff and made a yearly wage of roughly $24,000 a year. That report showed that janitorial workers were among the six in 10 most common local jobs including food workers, waitstaff and cashiers that don’t pay a living wage.
This article appears in Oct 16-29, 2019.