"No one should live in a garage, regardless of where they work," says Cisco spokesman Steve Langdon. "But the reality is that there have been phenomenal successes in the Valley, and that has made life better for some. But to some extent, it's made life more difficult for others." Still, Langdon accepts no responsibility for people like Herrera who clean his company's sprawling facilities. The janitors, Langdon points out, work not for Cisco, but for outside contractors.
"We hope and expect our vendors treat the people they employ fairly," Langdon says. And if they don't? "You don't seem to understand the way it works. The janitors work for the vendor. They don't work for us."
The majority of the Valley's janitors are represented by the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. Salvador Bustamante, the union's lead organizer in Northern California, accuses companies such as Cisco of hiding behind a technicality. "These companies benefit directly from the labor of these janitors," says Bustamante. "And yet when it's time for them to take responsibility for the situation, they wash their hands. They say, 'Well, they don't work for me, they work for contractor X.' Yet they set the terms under which the contractor is brought in to clean a facility. They're the ones who decide how much they're willing to pay."
The union plans to turn up the heat in Silicon Valley, especially underneath the area's most successful tech companies. The contract between the union and a consortium of outside firms that hire its workers expires at the end of May. And though representatives from only these janitorial services firms will be at the bargaining table, the union recognizes that its best weapon will be to place the spotlight on the image-conscious tech companies. "We intend on calling attention to the unfairness that these companies are so prosperous while our members are living in poverty," Bustamante says. The pending battle, whatever the outcome, is certain to generate plenty of noise - and to serve as a flash point for the growing tensions between the Valley's rich and poor.
The SEIU is seeking a wage increase of 56 percent over three years. That number might sound remarkably ambitious until you figure - as did a member of Bustamante's staff - that in one hour, Cisco generates more than enough revenue to cover the cost of the entire three-year raise for its 120 or so janitors. Already, the union has staged several protests at area companies, including Sun Microsystems (SUNW), Apple (AOIXQ) and Oracle (ORCL). Next on the agenda is a series of larger demonstrations, including one that the union is promising will be the largest in Valley history. It will be held in Mountain View on April 27. "You can expect some civil disobedience," Bustamante says.
A unionized janitor cleaning office space in San Francisco, a staunchly pro-union town, makes $14.45 an hour, or $30,000 a year. By contrast, a janitor belonging to the same union but working in San Jose or Santa Clara County, makes just $8.04 an hour. Those working in San Mateo County, the county just south of San Francisco, make $7.64 an hour, or just under $16,000 a year. That's in a part of the world where it's normal to hear single people who make more than five times that amount complain, with justification, about the high cost of living. The union is demanding a raise of $1.29 in the first year of the contract, and raises of $1.50 in each of years two and three. That would mean an hourly wage of $12.33 an hour by mid-2002.
The last time the SEIU local negotiated a new contract, the union launched a series of one-day walkouts up and down the peninsula, hitting Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, among other companies. At that time, the two sides were haggling over much less. The final deal hammered out between the two sides gave the janitors a raise of 90 cents per hour over three years.
"People's expectations are much higher this time around," says Inmar Liborio, a janitor who sits on the union's negotiating committee. "We want a raise that will let us live in decent conditions." Liborio, a father of two, works five nights a week at Hewlett-Packard and then logs another 25 hours a week cleaning homes with his wife.
In the old days, established firms like Hewlett-Packard hired janitors in-house. But HP was part of a national trend that saw firms turn to outside contractors to save money during the 1980s. So, whereas 20 years ago, according to the union, HP included its janitors in its generous benefits plan and paid them more than $14 an hour, their custodians now receive $8 an hour and receive only the barest bones of benefits. An HP representative could neither confirm nor deny the earlier figure of $14 an hour.
