MEDIA ADVISORY FOR:
Wednesday, November 8, 2006

CONTACT:
Lynda Tran
202-907-1172

In Week 3 of janitors’ growing and public strike…

Janitors, supporters go to City Hall to Raise Questions about Chevron Tax Breaks

Higher wages, health care for janitors important for future of Houston

Houston –- Should billion dollar companies who don’t support good jobs with health care in Houston receive tax breaks? That’s the question striking janitors and community supporters will pose to the city’s elected and business leaders at separate actions on Wednesday, November 8. A group of striking janitors and supporters will visit Houston City Hall at 9:30AM Wednesday to discuss the impact of the city’s high number of uninsured on taxpayers in light of a multi-million dollar tax break Chevron will receive over ten years and call on city leaders to help end the strike. At 11:15AM Wednesday, workers and supporters will highlight the importance of higher wages and health care for workers to Houston’s economic future at a rally outside a meeting between Shell Oil and other business leaders at the Houston Club.

Nearly two thousand janitors are now in Week 3 of a growing and public strike. It would cost less than a nickel per square foot per year of the rental dollar for building owners to finance higher wages and health insurance for Houston janitors.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Wednesday, November 8
9:30AM Janitors and supporters to call on city leaders to help end strike
Houston City Hall – City Council Session

11:15AM Janitors rally outside Shell Oil meeting
Houston Club, 811 Rusk Avenue

More than 1,700 janitors are on strike in key buildings in Galleria, Greenway Plaza, and downtown Houston. Janitors who clean the majority of Houston’s office space have among the lowest wages and benefits of any major city in the United States—earning an average of $5.30/hour with no health or other benefits for almost exclusively part-time work. Since forming a union with SEIU last year, more than 5,300 janitors have been seeking a raise to $8.50/hour, more hours, and health insurance in contract talks with the city’s five largest cleaning companies, ABM, OneSource, GCA, Sanitors, and Pritchard.

Since last week, janitors and community supporters have intensified the call to Houston’s building owners to intervene in the growing strike and instruct the contractors they hire to bargain in good faith and provide janitors with decent wages and health insurance. On Thursday, janitors’ supporters protested the real estate industry’s failure to ensure good jobs with health care in Houston by engaging in an act of non-violent civil disobedience that closed the intersection of Post Oak and Westheimer in the Galleria area.