Janitors who clean some of the largest office buildings in the Twin Cities have won a new contract, gaining a raise to $20 an hour and their first employer-funded 401(k), among other benefits.
The deal reached early Saturday morning came after 4,000 workers with Service Employees International Union Local 26 went on a three-day strike.
The majority immigrant workforce is employed by several large subcontractors, including ABM, Marsden and Harvard, to clean buildings across the metro, including many downtown Minneapolis locations.
Union members will vote to approve the tentative agreement later this week.
Mike Bartos, a janitor with Marsden who cleans at the Minnesota Department of Human Services building downtown St. Paul said he considered the agreement to be the “best deal we’ve ever got,” and said that was due to the fact workers were willing to go on strike.
“We won a retirement plan and higher raises, and we helped expand union rights. We are proud of how hard we fought and are going to be ready to come back in four years to keep winning more of what we deserve,” Bartos said.
The tentative deal includes an immediate raise to $20 an hour, with an additional 17% increase over the four-year contract; the commercial janitors’ first employer-funded 401(k); lower health care costs; and more sick days and floating holidays.
Local 26 had been bargaining with the employers for months. SEIU and other local unions set a date of early March for walkouts if multiple employers across industries did not settle new contracts.
During the strike, janitors picketed and marched all over downtown Minneapolis, rallied at the State Capitol with striking nursing home workers and joined airport workers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Two other groups represented by Local 26, 2,000 security officers and 500 retail janitors, reached tentative deals for new contracts ahead of their strike deadlines.
Nursing home, airport workers
More than 1,000 workers from 12 Twin Cities nursing homes are still bargaining for new contracts after they staged a 24-hour walkout last week.
Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa, said the contracts are negotiated facility by facility. Workers from United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 663 also participated in the one-day walkout. Pay and staffing issues are among their key concerns.
Another group represented by Local 26—1,000 passenger services workers at MSP—was not able to strike last week because of federal regulations.
But some of the cabin cleaners, wheelchair pushers and cart drivers represented by the union participated in the “Week of Action,” joining striking janitors on Wednesday for a rally at the airport.
Fifteen people were arrested after blocking a traffic lane at Terminal 1, local news sources reported.
“We continue to be at the bargaining table with those contractors, and they are not making any movement,” Local 26 President Greg Nammacher said.
Local 26 has been calling on the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) as well as state legislators to raise the minimum wage at the airport.
