Imagine this: dirty bathrooms, overflowing garbage bins, filthy classrooms. It may happen in Hartford, will it happen in Fairfield?
In the nearby state capital, approximately 1,800 janitors are threatening to walk out of their jobs if new contract negotiations, in which the union members are requesting increased wages and benefits, are not approved.
These men and women belong to Connecticut’s Service Employees Union Independent, the same union to which Fairfield workers who are from Pritchard Industries Inc. belong.
The strike would affect nearly all of Hartford’s municipal buildings, leaving the majority of the city with less than 10 percent of its cleaning services.
While there are no current plans for a similar strike at Fairfield, relations between the University and its cleaning providers have a far from perfect history.
In 1999, a total of 39 students, faculty and staff staged a sit-in in then-president Aloysius P. Kelley’s office to protest janitors being prohibited to join the union. Others participated in a hunger strike.
At the time, janitors at Fairfield made $7 an hour, or $14,000 a year, and wage increases were a primary reason for attempting to unionize.
The Service Management Group, a contracting group used by Fairfield, was refusing the janitors’ requests, and the University refused to help. The students, members of the group Justice for Janitors, were successful, and the janitors were unionized later that year.
According to English Professor Gita Rajan, who was integral to the 1999 protests, rallying for fair treatment of custodial staff and all service workers is an essential part of belonging to a Jesuit institution.
“If we, as an educational institution, want to instill in our students values of equitable and ethical societies, we need to live by what we preach,” Rajan said. “When we come to work, we must be proud of this place.”
For Rajan, “being proud meant working somewhere where everyone is treated as a valuable member of this community.”
The 1999 protests brought Fairfield national attention as an activist campus, with such publications as The New York Times covering the event.
However, a union does not guarantee those who clean our campus an ideal environment. According to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Fairfield County unionized janitors make between $10-$12 an hour, which often does not provide for the daily cost of living.
Kurt Westby, the SEIU 32JB local representative, told Hartford Business that the union’s goal is to make janitorial services a lower-middle class career.
“Historically, janitorial is a sweatshop industry,” he said.
Jocelyn Boryczka, director of peace and justice studies, agrees, saying that service industries are often disregarded, with workers forced to live under the poverty line because they are deemed invaluable.
“Emptying trash cans, cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming carpets represent the care work done by janitors, essential work that, if not performed for a few days or more, becomes blindingly apparent to the rest of us,” she said. “Valuing this type of labor is essential to valuing members of our society who do very difficult work that should receive higher wages and benefits.”
Many students agreed and said they hope that the Hartford walk-out threat does not affect Fairfield University.
“I think the men and women who clean up after us should be treated fairly,” said Rebecca Battey ’10. “It would be disastrous if they didn’t.”
Alyssa Ockerbloom ’08 agreed, “No one wants dirty bathrooms and classrooms.”
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