Justice for ServiceMaster Janitors

Janitors in downtown Portland work for Servicemaster of Swan Island (NYSE:SVM) cleaning the Rose Garden, Memorial Coliseum and buildings owned by local real estate firm Melvin Mark Companies. Forced to work part-time without health insurance, many of these janitors earn only about 28 dollars a day. Most are immigrants from Latin America and other parts of the world.

To address their deplorable working conditions and win respect on the job, they are struggling to form a union with SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign. Their company and the wealthy real-estate barons that hire them have refused to address these concerns, even after several strikes and the strong support of many prominent local leaders.

For two decades, SEIU’s Justice for Janitors movement has helped low-wage workers achieve social and economic justice and earn broad-based support from the public as well as religious, political and community leaders. More than 200,000 janitors in more than 29 cities throughout the United States have united in SEIU, America’s largest union of property services workers.