Megan Tady reports on SEIU's efforts to organize shopping-center cleaning crews:
SEIU began organizing mall workers in 2006 by focusing on the owner-contractor relationships of Simon Properties Group and Westfield Properties, two of the nation's largest mall owners. Like General Growth, Simon Properties and Westfield both use cleaning contractors, and SEIU urged the companies to commit to hiring contractors who pay good wages, provide health care, and respect workers' rights to unionize.In December 2006, SEIU announced a partnership with the two mall owners who agreed to only hire responsible contractors, and the union has since moved on to target General Growth. SEIU says that while workers at 20 General Growth-owned malls have recently joined with the union, the corporation has yet to make a similar commitment. Although the company has offered higher wages since the organizing drive began, Manny Pastreich, deputy director of SEIU's property service division, says the gesture is empty without General Growth's recognition of workers' union rights."Today General Growth gives people raises, tomorrow they could take them away," said Pastreich. "And if there's no protection for those workers, as soon as the glare of an organizing campaign is gone, General Growth can go back to a low-bid contractor and those workers could lose all those gains."
Read the rest (and comment) here. --The Editors
