Anticipating the Next Move

Union activity has been dormant for many schools, universities, health care facilities and commercial corporations during the last decade. Now, in the last few years, the cleaning industry — both in-house and outsourced — is one of many service sectors involved in a highly public labor movement to expand union membership.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, has stated that labor groups collectively need to organize about 1 million workers annually to stave off the overall loss of members unions have experienced in the last decade. While unions in the U.S. only were able to bring in about half that amount last year, the number of newly recruited members in the janitorial field sharply increased. And it looks as though the industry’s two most active unions — the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation State, County and Municipal Employees — plan to continue their push into the cleaning industry in coming years.

While there are differences between the two unions and even between the tactics of their individual locals, the debate regarding living wages has been at the center of most union-related organizing efforts. This is the idea that pay scales should be in line with local cost-of-living standards. Labor activists and union leaders argue that while cleaning workers around the country are paid minimum wage or more, these wages are not enough to cover cleaners’ basic necessities such as rent, food and healthcare.

Because in-house housekeeping departments often are buried within the many layers of their organizations, they don’t necessarily fall into any easily defined union target areas. Managers could find some union organizing campaigns specifically targeting cleaning workers, such as the SEIU’s Justice for Janitors program. Others may find their employees lumped together with other workers in their organizations, during organizing drives. For instance, in health care environments nurses, clerks, technicians and cleaners all can be represented under a single collective bargaining agreement.

Department managers also will find that the brunt of dealing with union activities and worker questions about the activities falls on their shoulders, while their hands may be tied when it comes to determining things such as bringing cleaning in-house, hiring labor consultants or adjusting wages and benefits.

Additional shifts in focus
Another issue that increasingly is tied to union-related organizing efforts is the debate regarding privatization versus in-house cleaning. There has been a renewed interest at many colleges and universities in bringing housekeeping in-house because student activists and union leaders view contract cleaning as one way wages and benefits have been suppressed over time. Saint Louis University as well as American University have recently gone in-house for financial reasons and other schools in St. Louis are considering the same move. But in the case of St. Louis University, the local union helped broach the subject with facilities personnel and gather research to aid administrators in their decision.

The face of union organizers also is shifting these days. Labor groups are tapping heavily into college students, who already may have a bent toward social activism, to join organizing campaigns across the country during summer internships. These students often are enlisted to help workers in campaigns across a variety of industries, not just in the education field.

Once these interns return from their summer stints, they often enlist others on campus to make a stand for living wage considerations for university employees or other workers in their local communities. So, at times, the unions are less involved with organizing and living wage debates than student activist groups are, making it less obvious for managers as to the protocol they should use when dealing with these labor movements.

Often housekeeping managers are caught between the union and administrators with little understanding of what their role should be.

What you need to know
Key to making the right decisions regarding labor movements is an understanding of union organizing efforts, as well as the legalities of what management can and can’t do during such activities.

• Management does not have the option of choosing whether a union represents their employees. The National Labor Relations Act gives workers the right to organize. Managers, however, can spell out to employees what a union can and can’t offer workers, as well as the impact of unionization on the organization. What managers can’t do is offer incentives to workers who choose not to organize, threaten workers in any way or treat organizing workers differently than others on staff.

“Employers have a right to provide lots of information to employees regarding why they don’t think unionization is a good idea and why they oppose the union coming in,” says Michael Stevens, a partner in Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn’s Washington D.C. office who handles labor issues. “The two biggest mistakes [managers] make are freezing and thinking they can’t do or say anything to employees regarding the union, or not realizing there are some limits on what they can say and do.”

One sticking point may be determining who is considered an employee able to organize and who is a manager unable to help other workers organize. Departments need to define this difference with their team leads, supervisors and other middle managers to avoid any unnecessary labor law violations.

• Employers have the right to hire labor consultants to help them navigate the legal aspects of union organizing and labor regulations. Such advisors also can help organizations determine the best way to interact with workers, media, the union and the public. While unions may consider this a “union-busting” technique, employers can turn to outside help without violating labor laws or infringing on employee rights.

• Unionization does not guarantee a particular wage or work benefit. The employer only is required to bargain “in good faith” regarding union requests, which means workers may not get increases the union promises to lobby for. Sometimes increases could take place over the course of a few years, not right away. The union also often requires employees to pay membership dues without a guarantee of pay increases. Employers can tell workers about these facts but need to be careful that the situations in which they hold these conversations do not seem in any way intimidating to workers.

• The union has many means available to encourage or promote unionization, as long as it doesn’t break local laws, which may include things such as blocking entrances to buildings or transportation, violating noise ordinances or trespassing.

• A manager or employer legally can’t recognize the union’s representation unless it has the support of the majority of workers, says Stevens. Employers can speak with union representatives at any time during an organizing campaign, he adds, but they need to make sure that their conversations do not imply recognition if they don’t intend them to. Managers and supervisors need to be sure to direct any union inquiries to administrators so as not to accidentally recognize representation and jeopardize administrator’s plans for working with the union.

• Traditionally, union organizers will collect signed authorization cards as proof of the union’s majority status in a given facility. Many employers who oppose unionization decline to voluntarily recognize the union, and avoid meeting with the union. This usually is because they do not want to be presented with proof of alleged majority status, based on concerns about whether employees actually knew what they were signing, and/or whether employees were pressured into signing the cards. In that case, the union may file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requesting a secret ballot election, says Stevens.

To file a petition, the union must have the support of at least 30 percent of the employees, but in most cases the union will not file a petition unless it thinks it has the support of at least 50 percent of employees, he adds.

A union is recognized if 51 percent of workers or more vote in favor of representation. Then the contractor must move forward with “good faith bargaining” with the union, according to the NLRB.

Union goals in 2002
The SEIU has been one of the most publicly prominent unions organizing janitorial workers in the last few years, though its well-known Justice for Janitors campaign typically focuses on commercial contract cleaners. Less publicized efforts have made large strides in organizing in-house cleaners as part of the “non-professional” classification of health-care workers in a variety of hospitals and nursing homes, says Amy Gladstein, assistant for strategic organizing for SEIU Local 1199, representing New York state.

She says this employee group traditionally has been the base of the SEIU in health care but now the union is trying to organize such workers in suburban areas that may not have had as large of a union presence as big cities such as New York, Los Angeles or Boston.

The SEIU also is using a recent contract agreement at Harvard to make inroads at other universities and colleges across the country, says Jim McNeil, an SEIU spokesperson. Harvard students led a movement to pay in-house and contract cleaners the same wages and benefits after their attempts to bring outsourced employees in-house was unsuccessful.

The SEIU helped Harvard students and workers visit more than 50 colleges, universities and union locals this Spring to show a student-made movie of a pivotal sit-in at the university and to explain how the students helped the union affect a wage change on campus.

While the union targeted some schools it feels have unfair wage scales, at many others, student activist groups that have turned their focus from anti-sweatshop activities to living wage campaigns invited the tour to their campuses. Their goal was to learn what protest tactics work best to affect changes in cleaners’ wages and benefits. The facility departments at many campuses where the students visited had no idea the SEIU was helping activists prepare their own living wage campaigns until Housekeeping Solutions called to find out more about the status of workers at those schools.

“You can’t know what every student activist group is doing,” admits one university labor relations director. “But it would be wise to find out if there is a living wage group in your area so that you are prepared for any public activities they might hold.”

For AFSCME — the union primarily representing state, federal and local governmental employees across the U.S. — increasing membership also has become a greater focus in the last few years. About 25 percent of the group’s resources go toward organizing, but AFSCME also spends much of its efforts lobbying legislators for such things as collective bargaining laws in states where unions traditionally haven’t been as strong, says Daniel Kaufman, AFSCME spokesperson.

“The U.S. typically is split 50/50 in right-to-work states versus those allowing collective bargaining,” he explains.

The difference between the two is that right-to-work states do not require employees in areas where unions are present to pay dues to compensate locals for their bargaining, which can benefit non-union workers. If that is the case, fewer employees choose to pay dues if they can gain the same benefits for free, says Kaufman.

Washington and Kentucky expanded their collective-bargaining laws recently and AFSCME plans to focus in those areas in the future. The union also has been working to organize Maryland universities, state workers in Missouri and workers in Oregon. There also has been a large contract campaign targeting the University of California, says Kaufman.

Another focus for AFSCME has been moving into the private health care sector, he adds. The union already has begun organizing private health care workers to help broaden the scope of its influence in that market.

Taking appropriate action
When a union comes calling, it may be confusing and frustrating for managers who are not allowed to have much discussion about the topic. But if approached, managers need to know how to respond.

If a union representative or student activist contacts a housekeeping manager to discuss labor-related issues such as pay scales or organizing efforts, the manager should listen to the person’s comments and then direct them to the proper administrator who handles such issues, or promptly find out who they should deal with.

If labor-related activities seem to be impeding the department’s ability to work, the manager should contact the appropriate administrators to find out how to handle the situation before confronting the people involved or calling security personnel. This often can dispel hostile situations that otherwise can escalate out of hand or lead to labor violations.

Above all, managers should remain calm and act quickly to solve problems or pass along information. They also should stay in close contact with their lower-level supervisors to make sure any agreed-upon responses or actions are uniform across the department.

The same should be true of administrators who must make decisions regarding how to interact with union representatives or labor activists. Keeping all necessary staff informed of organizational policies will help provide a consistent response and avoid unnecessary conflicts or publicized labor disputes.