DETERMINED UNION Former cleaners protest outside Ellis School, demand their jobs back
Speeches and chants broke through the still morning in Shadyside on Monday as seven former cleaners at the Ellis School, joined by dozens of union members, demanded their jobs back after their contracts were not renewed.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents the employees of Alder Services, organized the rally outside the all-girls preparatory school. The union said the Alder employees’ jobs were undercut after another cleaning service was awarded the contract. Homestead-based General Cleaning Inc. took over the contract on Aug. 1 with new workers represented by the United Steel Workers who are being paid $4 less an hour than the former staff from Alder.
The SEIU filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations
Board on Aug. 8 that claims the school “refused to hire the incumbent cleaners because of their membership in Local 32BJ.”
It also accused General Cleaning with “recognizing another union and entering into a collective bargaining agreement with such union to cover the cleaners without any demonstration of majority support by the cleaners for the union.”
As a result of the SEIU complaint, Fred Redmond, USW’s international vice president for human affairs, wrote a letter to General Cleaning demanding “that these USW members currently assigned to the Ellis School worksite be reassigned to other worksites at which the USW and its Local 14034-45 currently represent the workforce.”
Macon Finley, head of school at Ellis, declined to comment on the complaint against its contractor.
Alyce Toombs, 47, of Wilkinsburg and the six other cleaners received more than $12.85 an hour under their SEIU 32BJ contracts, and the new workers will be making less than $9 an hour.
Ellis School said in a statement Sunday that cost was not a criterion they used in their decision with General Cleaning Inc. and will maintain roughly the same staffing levels.
“After a long and arduous notification and communication process with our former cleaning service, we concluded that the needs of our students were not met to our satisfaction,” the statement said.
“Our former cleaning service could not meet our expectations and we exercise our legal right to end that relationship.” Union organizer Gabby Jones Casey called on Ellis officials to “stand with working mothers, working parents and support families.” She and other SEIU 32BJ members led chants of “no justice, no peace,” “stand up, fight back,” and said working women were under attack.
“We hope to bring the janitors back,” said union organizer Rich Johnston.
“No one should be thrown out like that. They should not be thrown out like the trash these cleaners throw out.”
Dressed in SEIU shirts, the protesters shouted, “Deborah, come outside,” and “Give us our jobs back, Deborah,” calling on Deborah Kuchta, director of finance and operations for the Ellis School, to comment on the contract change and sit down with the union for talks.
Ms. Toombs, who said she received a two-week notice via text message, said she has been struggling to make ends meet after three weeks without a job.
She said reading the text was “a wild moment; a gut punch.”
“I still have to feed my family, pay bills, put gas in my car to get around,” said Ms. Toombs, who is a mother of three and has worked at the school for over a year. “Bills don’t stop.”
A petition on Moveon.org calling on the school to reinstate its contract with Alder Services has received more than 300 signatures toward its 400-signature goal.
Mr. Johnston said the union has made several attempts to bring the petitions to Ms. Kuchta but she has not taken them.
He added the most important thing now is to get the school to allow former cleaners to reapply for their jobs and get them back to cleaning the building.
“We’re not done yet,” he said. ”We are going to continue fighting back for these workers.”