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June 4, 1999
Most of you don’t know us. But without us, The Sun would not get printed each day. We’re the 34 members of the building department, the people Sun management wants to replace. What we do isn’t always glamorous. Often, it’s dangerous. But we’re proud of our work. We janitors take out your trash, move furniture, bait for mice and otherwise ensure the health and safety of everyone who works here. Once there were 32 of us at Calvert Street alone. Now, we’re down to 11. That’s why the building doesn’t always look as clean as we’d like. But we work hard, and with more manpower we could do more. Likewise, the corps of mechanics has been severely depleted. We once
had 16 men at Calvert Street alone. Now we’re down to two, augmented
by some non-union contractors (a practice we have grieved). Remember
that the next time the air conditioning breaks down. At Sun Park, we have
six men working around the clock. Some of us have been here since the building
went up – and aided in its design. We’re all highly skilled tradesmen
with a variety of certificates and licenses (one of us is even licensed
to perform welding at a nuclear power plant). We work with delicate computer-controlled
equipment to maintain the precise temperature and humidity to keep the
presses rolling, keep the inserters
We work as hard as anybody in the company. Two of our members, janitors Howard Shoats and Al Parker, became charter winners of the Extra Mile Award in 1996 for working around the clock for three days during the blizzard. At Sun Park, several mechanics won Extra Mile honors for taking quick action to avert disaster when fire broke out in the dust collectors over the presses. Would an outside contractor walk the same extra mile? We’ve saved the company a bundle over the years, putting our knowledge to work redesigning the packaging room and repacking a boiler. Getting outside contractors to do that work would have cost much, much more. Our bosses told us so. But that’s just what management is proposing. We know the Guild has a long tradition of keeping up with the times. When automation or consolidation eliminated certain work, the Union negotiated fair terms for the affected employees. The Union has never said “no” to a reasonable request. This is not a reasonable request. This is a company making record profits that wants to replace $7.50 an hour janitors with non-Union replacements that cost less. The work isn’t changing, just the workers the company wants to use. There’s no economic necessity here, no technological revolution. If making the presses run isn’t part of a newspaper’s “core competency,” then what is? Reasonable? Hardly. It’s greedy. And look at what management is offering: vague promises of unspecified “other jobs” that may or may not be around in two years, jobs that may or may not utilize our unique skills and knowledge of the buildings. There’s no job security, no choice. And the option – a laughable severance package – has to be selected before we even know what jobs we’ll be transferred to. We need your help. Management is betting the rest of you will toss us overboard. They are betting you won’t fight for janitors. That you won’t fight for people of color who make up most of the lowest-paid workers at The Sun. They’re hoping we aren’t a true union. That the members will let them nibble around the edges of our jurisdiction, trying to accomplish bite-by-bite what they couldn’t buy from us wholesale in December. Who’s next? Telephone operators? Messengers? Editorial Assistants? Electricians? We’ve walked picket lines with you before, fought and won your battles and ours. We need you again to stand with us and tell the company: |
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