Fighting for Responsible Employment Practices
As part of the union’s commitment to high service and employment standards in the janitorial industry, SEIU is leading a national effort to police janitorial companies -- and the corporations that hire them – that skirt the law by refusing to pay workers overtime and minimum wage, or engaging in other wage and hour law violations.
In January 2005, 2,000 mostly Latino janitors who clean national supermarket chains won $22.4 million in a landmark settlement of a class action lawsuit initiated by SEIU involving the failure of subcontractors to pay their employees according to overtime and minimum wage laws.
A separate class action lawsuit over unlawful pay practices is pending involving potentially thousands of janitors who cleaned United Parcel Service facilities, hotels, offices, and other sites in Texas and Illinois. The janitors worked as much as 60 hours a week without being paid overtime and had money stripped from their wages by their employer to pay for workers' comp insurance, according to the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of the janitors with the assistance of SEIU.