Janice Fine is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations
In an unprecedented victory, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), a Twin Cities worker center founded in 2005, has won a Responsible Contractor Policy from the Target Corporation. Target came to the table and engaged in discussion directly with store janitors after four years of activity during which CTUL released a study documenting the substandard wages and working conditions of the retail cleaning sector, organized a series of actions including a 12-day hunger strike and 3 strikes in 2013. The campaign had already resulted in a crackdown on wage theft and health and safety violations, recovery of over half a million dollars in back wages and an increase in the average wage across the labor market from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour.
As a consequence of focusing attention on substandard conditions, there was considerable industry consolidation and CTUL then pushed to institutionalize and expand on those victories as workers began demanding union representation.
Beginning in September of 2014, vendor housekeeping service agreements in Target stores will include:
- Protecting and ensuring workers rights to collectively bargain with their employers
- Ensuring that workers have the right to form safety committees in their workplace made up of at least 50% of workers who are designated by their co-workers
- Ensuring that workers are not forced to work 7 days a week
The agreement with Target to hold cleaning subcontractors at its stores to a code of conduct is extremely important because it represents an acknowledgement, for the first time, of responsibility for labor conditions in the company supply chain–even if the Target corporation is not signing janitors’ paychecks. To organize successfully to raise standards workers have to be able to reach the actors at the top of the chain who have the power and resources to change the terms and conditions of work at their subcontractors.
SEIU is now moving to organize the janitors in a cooperative membership arrangement with CTUL which is also a groundbreaking development because while unions and worker centers are working together more and more on policy issues, there are still relatively few examples of actual joint organizing.
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August 20
5th Circuit upholds injunctions based on challenges to NLRB constitutionality; Illinois to counteract federal changes to wage and hour, health and safety laws.
August 19
Amazon’s NLRA violations, the end of the Air Canada strike, and a court finds no unconstitutional taking in reducing pension benefits
August 18
Labor groups sue local Washington officials; the NYC Council seeks to override mayoral veto; and an NLRB official rejects state adjudication efforts.
August 17
The Canadian government ends a national flight attendants’ strike, and Illinois enacts laws preserving federal worker protections.
August 15
Columbia University quietly replaces graduate student union labor with non-union adjunct workers; the DC Circuit Court lifts the preliminary injunction on CFPB firings; and Grubhub to pay $24.75M to settle California driver class action.
August 14
Judge Pechman denies the Trump Administration’s motion to dismiss claims brought by unions representing TSA employees; the Trump Administration continues efforts to strip federal employees of collective bargaining rights; and the National Association of Agriculture Employees seeks legal relief after the USDA stopped recognizing the union.