Janitors plan to campaign for health care insurance

After negotiating a new contract with Pitt, the workers in the purple shirts are back, and… After negotiating a new contract with Pitt, the workers in the purple shirts are back, and this time, they’re going Downtown.

On Oct. 31, the contract for the approximately 1,000 Service Employees International Union janitors, who clean many of the offices Downtown, expires. So SEIU, the union that includes Pitt’s custodians and grounds crew, is organizing the Downtown Contract Campaign to support their interests.

Wednesday night, Tom Hoffman, SEIU’s spokesperson, and Jim Bird, a custodian and SEIU steward for the One Mellon Center building, met with Students in Solidarity to discuss their issues and plans for the campaign.

Hoffman said that, although SEIU supports the fight for a living wage, the main focus of the campaign is obtaining affordable health care coverage, particularly for families.

According to an SEIU news release, 15 percent of workers in Allegheny County making between $20,000 and $30,000 go without health care coverage because they cannot afford the premiums.

Hoffman added that health care premiums in Allegheny County have increased and are now higher than anywhere else in the country.

“If I was married, I wouldn’t be able to afford health care coverage for me and my wife,” Bird said. “I remember when I was growing up in the 60s, 70s and 80s, I never dreamed health care would be an issue.”

William Modoono, spokesman for UPMC Health Plan, said the rising cost of health care affects all parts of the country. He explained that health care costs are rising in response to emerging technologies that can better prevent and treat illnesses, rising pharmacy costs prompted by better drugs and increased direct advertising, and the region’s aging population.

To start the fight to ensure family health care, regardless of the reasons for the cost increases, SEIU workers held their kick-off convention to the campaign at the United Church of Christ, Downtown on Sept. 13. The union will be rallying Downtown on Sept. 26 and Oct. 17, and gathering support from community groups, such as the North Shore Community Group and Students in Solidarity, during the next month.

Hoffman added that SEIU would be sending delegations to meet with the tenants of Pittsburgh office buildings, such as Liberty Center and the Fifth Avenue Place Building, to introduce the office workers to the janitors and ask for support.

The SEIU Downtown contract campaign is part of the union’s larger Justice for Janitors campaign, which works for affordable health care and janitors’ interests in cities around the country. Hoffman said that, during the spring, SEIU supported a strike in Boston and obtained health care for 600 janitors.

Now, the international union is working to make health care an issue for the presidential election in 2004. Hoffman described the posters SEIU will be hanging in the airports of states with early primaries: a female health care worker pointing directly at the viewer, saying, “Running for President? Health Care better be your priority.”

“If we’re going to get a solution, it’s going to be a national solution,” Hoffman said. “We see what’s happening to the janitors here as a way to galvanize the community for what we’re going to be fighting for next year.”

He added that, though SEIU workers at Pitt had recently accepted a contract with enough of a wage increase to cushion their rising health care costs, some appeared at last week’s convention to show their support.

“Pitt janitors know that the Downtown janitors were there for them during the Pitt negotiations, so they’ll be there for the Downtown people,” Hoffman said.