Houston?s major cleaning companies and the union representing 5,300 janitors there announced a tentative contract yesterday that ends a monthlong strike, raises the workers? hourly wages by nearly 50 percent over two years and provides them health coverage. Under the three-year deal, the first for the janitors since they unionized last year, their pay, which now averages $5.25 an hour, will increase to $6.25 on Jan. 1, 2007; to $7.25 on Jan. 1, 2008; and to $7.75 on Jan. 1, 2009. Further, the employers agreed to increase a janitor?s typical shift to six hours a day, from four. Many of the janitors had said they were being given too few hours of work to support their families.
See "Cleaning Companies in Accord With Striking Houston Janitors", Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, November 20, 2006