While contract negotiations between Boston-area cleaning contractors and janitors remain deadlocked as a strike continues to affect normal cleaning and maintenance services at many high profile buildings (see yesterday?s WIT), owners and janitors in the St. Louis area have finalized a contract agreement. By an overwhelming margin of 2,847 to three, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 50 ratified a four-year contract retroactive to October 1, that includes a raise of at least twenty-eight percent for all members over the life of the contract. Working without a contract since the beginning of the year, and often paid just over the minimum wage despite cleaning the same buildings for several years, the janitors began a ?Justice for Janitors? publicity campaign and began a seven-week targeted work stoppage nine weeks ago in order to put pressure on the area?s big cleaning companies.
See REPPS HUDSON, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8, 2002