MEDIA ADVISORY FOR:
Friday, November 3, 2006

CONTACT:
Lynda Tran
202-907-1172

One day after janitors, supporters block Galleria’s busiest intersection to protest real estate industry’s failure to support good jobs with health care in Houston…

Houston faith leaders to call on Gerald Hines to meet with janitors and resolve strike at Central Houston annual meeting

HOUSTON –- An ecumenical group of local faith leaders will call on Hines Founder and CEO Gerald Hines to meet with janitors and resolve a growing strike in a delegation to the head of one of Houston’s largest and most influential building owners at the Central Houston Annual meeting 11AM Friday, November 3 at the Hilton Americas Houston. The faith delegation comes one day after janitors and supporters brought traffic to a halt at the Galleria-area’s busiest intersection to protest the industry’s failure to support good jobs with health care in Houston. With janitors now in the second week of a very public strike, religious, political and community leaders have intensified the call to Houston’s building owners to intervene in the growing strike and instruct the contractors they hire to provide janitors with decent wages and health insurance.

WHAT: Faith delegation to Hines Founder and CEO Gerald Hines
WHERE: Hilton Americas Houston, 1600 Lamar -– Downtown
WHEN: 11AM Friday, November 3, 2006

Janitors have asked Hines and other leading building owners in Houston—including Chevron, Transwestern, Brookfield Properties, and Crescent—to help end the strike by instructing the cleaning contractors they hire to meet the janitors’ proposal for higher wages and health insurance. While Hines has publicly said they support the idea of higher wages and health insurance, they have stopped short of instructing their contractors to bargain in good faith and provide higher wages and benefits for the janitors. 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.

One of the world’s largest real estate firms, Hines Interests manages more office space than any other commercial landlord in Houston, more than 13 million square feet. Hines’s international headquarters is in Houston.

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.