UNION PROTESTS DEMAND RAISES
Rallies call for raises, decry employers for exploiting their lowestpaid workers
When it comes to surviving in Silicon Valley, the working poor face a merciless choice.
“You can be homeless or pennyless,” Albert Brown III, said. “If your salary pays for a place to live, that is all it pays for. Or you can live in your car and get a 24 Hour fitness membership,” said security contractor Brown, who has experience with both choices.
He was among more than 300 union members and supporters attending serial Labor Day rallies in San Jose and Santa Clara demanding better wages, benefits and working conditions. The rallies, put together by SEIU Local 521, were part of a nationwide organized-labor campaign on the nation’s 124th Labor Day holiday.
Outside a McDonald’s restaurant on North First Street in San Jose, protesters agitated for
“We work so hard, we don’t get to spend enough time with our children. Everything is getting more expensive, but the wages are staying the same.” — Sandra Rojas, 43, a lunch truck worker
$15 minimum wage, then stormed through the restaurant, banging drums and calling on bullhorns for better pay.
On a creek trail next to Dell, they scolded the tech giant for dumping janitorial contractors last year after workers won the right to unionize, and for replacing them with lower-paid, parttime workers. At at the Community Child Care Council of Santa Clara County, they demanded speedier contract negotiations for workers who unionized two years ago.
Despite the resurgent national economy, soaring local housing costs and stagnant wages have squeezed the lowest-paid workers.
“Workers in the service industry and child-care sector who are the backbone of our tech economy have not seen any of those economic gains and have been left behind,” said Riko Mendez, Local 521’s chief elected officer.
Olga Martinez of San Jose, who is not a union worker, attended the allmorning rallies Monday to lobby for higher local salaries. She commutes three hour roundtrip to a lobster-shift retail job in Sunnyvale, where the minimum wage is $13. San Jose’s current minimum wage is $12. Although her husband also works, she said, “Minimum-wage salaries don’t cover all of our expenses.”
Wearing red “Fight for $15” T-shirts, fast-food workers and their supporters were the rallies’ most visible and vocal contingent, part of a national organizing drive.
Speaker after speaker talked about the pressure and wrenching choices that the working poor are making.
Despite her mother working hard, “We have suffered with sometimes not having enough to eat,” said Yatziry Garcia, 13, whose mother, Alejandra Mejia, works in fast food. The family, including two younger children, lives in a shelter.
“We work so hard, we don’t get to spend enough time with our children,” said Sandra Rojas, 43, a lunch truck worker. “Everything is getting more expensive, but the wages are staying the same.”
Last year, the union representing 8,000 Bay Area janitorial workers won a new contract with 23 janitorial service firms and ensured raises to $15 for most workers and improved benefits and job protections.
Immediately afterward, Dell switched janitorial service providers and issued a statement claiming it was “committed to responsible business practices” but saying the pay issue was “between the union and a subcontractor of the facilities management company, CBRE.”
Workers lost their jobs or took big pay cuts.
It’s not just corporations that unions targeted. Speakers excoriated the not-for-profit corporation that provides much of public-funded child care in Santa Clara County and is enveloped in scandal and labor strife. It’s been the subject of state audits and its executive director has resigned. “The 4Cs is one of the worst employers we have ever run across,” SEIU’s Mendez said.
Employees unionized two years ago, but are still trying to negotiate their first contract.
“We decided to organize because of a lot of retaliation against workers,” said Mario Del Castillo, a former longtime caseworker with the agency and union negotiator, who was let go last month.
No one representing the agency was available to comment Monday.
After riding buses from rally to rally, workers concluded with a barbecue at SEIU offices in San Jose.
Brown, who most recently lived in San Mateo, said he once again is looking into the face of homelessness.
His dream is to transform himself someday from a perpetual housing seeker to a housing provider — creating a village of RVs to rent out, as he saw recently on a Craigslist ad, or bringing people together to collectively purchase a house.
To assembled demonstrators, he declared, “We’re here to help the community be stronger. There’s a way to make it happen: You’ve just got to stick together.”
“Stronger!” he shouted. “Together,” the ralliers responded, in a repeated chant.