[1] In 1985, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), under the leadership of John J. Sweeney, began the Justice for Janitors campaign, which was more of a movement than a traditional strike.
The SEIU hoped that the campaign would improve the socio-economic circumstances of workers from the custodial services industry, who were mostly immigrants and people of color, and would mobilize oppressed communities to counter entrenched racism through community-organization and civil disobedience.
The Justice for Janitors campaign uses a bottom-up model in which they organize workers based on geographical area rather than just their worksite.
The linked connections the movement had with community leaders, such as the Black and Latino organizations, churches, and activists allowed for the strikers to receive the attention needed to be granted their demands throughout the entire city of Los Angeles.
The success stretched beyond obtaining concessions from downtown luxury offices and the SEIU (Local 399) headquarters but also into the streets and boardrooms of the city, which paved the way for "a powerful mass movement."
(Kelley, 53)[2] It is important to remember that the SEIU in Los Angeles was heavily composed of immigrant workers who were faced with a huge challenge, Proposition 187.
Janitors for Justice employed UFW tactics, such as vivid imagery of the exploitation of workers, demonstrations, street theater, hunger strikes, vigils, blockades, clergy–labor alliance, and community organizing.
The protesters were clear and direct with their demands; they wanted to end tax breaks for real estate developers and cutback social programs designated for the poor.
Manny Pastreich, spokesperson of the union, even declared, “This isn’t just about 5,000 janitors; it’s about issues that concern all D.C. residents - what’s happening to their schools, their streets, their neighborhoods.” (Kelley, 53)[4] In the end, the strike resulted in being more than just a traditional strike, as expressed earlier, it was now a powerful mass movement looking out for everyone, no matter age, race, status, and everything, no matter building, location, object.
By 1986, the janitorial wages had been cut to a mere $4.50/hour ($10.05 in 2017 dollars adjusted for inflation), and health insurance coverage was no longer an option.
The Los Angeles campaign has been notable for the fact that many of the janitors were immigrants, most of them were women, and almost all were Latina/o all groups which have traditionally been viewed by unions as difficult to organize.
The Los Angeles Justice for Janitors union movement is well known for its mass protests where hundreds of mostly undocumented immigrant women and men from Mexico, and other central and South American countries disrupt the private and public spaces surrounding the buildings where they worked.
The Justice for Janitors organizers focused on "double-breasted" companies, which were "firms with both union and nonunion operations under different names."
SEIU's Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign was portrayed in the motion picture Bread and Roses.
Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas, says the Justice for Janitors effort is "the largest unionization campaign in the South in years."
The AFL-CIO attempted a campaign in the 1980s known as the Houston Organizing Project, as the companies fought hard during a suffering economy to defeat the unionization effort.
The clergy–labor alliance is a strong tactic first used by the UFW and Cesar Chavez, and it has been adopted by numerous labor groups because it helps gain support from the community by legitimizing the effort as a spiritual quest for justice.
An organization called STAND, Students Toward a New Democracy, had members attend direct action training workshops in San Francisco, paid for by SEIU.
STAND had managed to rally over 300 students for an email list and received 800 signatures from undergraduates on a petition demanding better worker pay.
This meant that the professors would be holding classes off-campus in order to avoid crossing the janitors' picket lines.
Former maid, Rocio Saenz, of the Local 254 of the SEIU in Boston, said “'janitors in New York, Chicago and San Francisco have health insurance, and when you consider that Boston is a world class city and has the second-highest rents in the nation, we don't understand it when the cleaning contractors say they can't afford to pay health insurance.''
[16] Criticism of the Justice for Janitors campaign is typically centered on non-democratic union processes and quick, trigger agreements.
[19] Furthermore, despite successes elsewhere, Justice for Janitors has struggled to create and maintain campaigns in the American South and in suburban areas where janitorial services have grown at rate beyond the organizing capacity of SEIU.