Thursday, October 26, 2006

Lynda Tran, 202-907-1172

With polls showing majority of Americans dissatisfied with direction of the country…

As Chevron Profits Shatter a 127 Year Record,
Alternate Earnings Report Shows Real Cost of “Spoils of Oil” for Americans

Growing strike by 1,700 janitors shining national spotlight on Houston as corporations failing to do right by families living in poverty

HOUSTON—As Chevron Corps (CVX) third quarter profits soared to $5 billion, the strike by 5,300 Houston janitors has intensified and could spread to buildings in other cities as earlier as next week.  SEIU, Spoils of Oil: The High Cost of Chevron’s Record Earnings,” an alternative earnings report to spotlight Houston’s extremes of wealth and poverty and the debate over big corporations’ responsibility for workers like Ercilia Sandoval, a striking janitor without health insurance who is battling breast cancer.

Houston janitors like Ercilia Sandoval have been on strike since October 23. Ercilia is paid roughly $20 a day and receives no health insurance. Though she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, she is a leader of the janitors’ struggle.

Janitors, community and religious leaders have waged a public campaign to persuade Chevron to instruct their contractors to meet the Houston janitors’ proposal of $8.50 per hour, employer-paid health insurance, and more working hours as well as to respect their workers’ rights and bargain in good faith with the union as the law requires.

The refusal by Chevron to take responsibility for supporting higher pay and benefits for workers who clean its buildings is putting a larger burden on Houston’s taxpayers. In response to questions about the janitors strike, Houston Mayor Bill White was quoted in TV news reports this week saying, “The health care costs of some of those workers without any health insurance is shifted to the Harris County Hospital District and property taxes of everybody.” (KPRC-TV Ch. 2 (NBC) 10/24, 5 a.m., 6 a.m., & 11 a.m.)

The gulf between rich and poor is stark in Houston, where oil companies are posting record profits. Yesterday Exxon Mobile recorded third quarter profits of $10.5 billion dollars, making it the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

Already, the income gap in Houston between rich and poor is wider than in most large cities in the United States.  According to a recent study by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, Houston's richest residents earn almost 18 times higher, at $143,321, than that of the poorest, at $8,075.

Houston janitors, who earn some of the lowest wages in the city, are in the fourth day of a city-wide strike after the national cleaning companies they work for failed to bargain in good faith, and instead unleashed a campaign to fire and intimidate workers who spoke out for job improvements.