Local 26 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents 4,200 Twin Cities janitors, has been deadlocked in negotiations with the cleaning companies. The janitors contract expired Dec. 31.

Just as this morning\'s meeting of the Building Owners and Managers Association was beginning, the group of SEIU supporters rushed into the banquet room and lined all sides of the room, unfurling banners and posters.

SEIU Local 26 members unfurled banners and posters and lined the walls of the banquet room. Bryant Thomas, SEIU Local 26 member, shouted out the message on his banner: "14 of 4,200 Janitors With Family Health Insurance is a Moral Crisis." Minneapolis Labor Review photo

"We are here today because 4,200 janitors cannot get a meeting with this group," explained the Rev. Doug Mork, representing the Workers Interfaith Network (WIN). "You have the power to make a difference," he urged BOMA members.

The BOMA members sat quietly for a few minutes as members of the SEIU group addressed them.

"Fourteen out of 4,200 janitors have family health care," called out Deborah Rosenstein, SEIU supporter. "United Properties, will you give us a meeting?"

Other group members called out, "United Properties, will you give us a meeting?"

"You can\'t in justice continue to stand back," said Sister Mary White, a member of WIN. "It\'s not right. It\'s not moral."

The banquet room full of building owners and managers sat silent.

Finally, one man rose from his table and replied, "we didn\'t come here to listen to you guys this morning. We came here to have our BOMA meeting."

"Now isn\'t the time," someone else from the BOMA group shouted.

Just then, someone from either the BOMA group or the Golden Valley Country Club began laying hands on members of the SEIU group, attempting to push them out of the room.

"Don\'t push," cried out Randy Croce, Labor Education Service, who was shouldering a large video camera and was hit with it as he was pushed out of the meeting room. (Croce related later, "I was just taping and all of a sudden someone came up from behind me and kind of wrestled me. He grabbed me and hit me. I told him, ‘I\'m nonviolent. There\'s no need for this. Just ask me to go.\'")

At this point, organizers of the SEIU group urged all their members to leave. Golden Valley police began entering the building as the SEIU group quickly filed out of the banquet room and then outside to the parking lot.

A few minutes later, the group reconvened at the SEIU Local 26 office at the United Labor Centre in northeast Minneapolis to debrief and plan next steps.

"Was that rockin\' or what," one person beamed as the group — with translations in English and in Spanish — shared their excitement about confronting the building owners group and asking them to get involved.

"These people have all this big money and they can help us out," said Bryant Thomas, SEIU Local 26 member.

The five largest downtown Minneapolis office buildings together paid more than $16 million less in property taxes in 2006 than in 2001, according to a SEIU report released last week. "The savings from those five buildings in 2006 alone would provide full family health insurance for every full-time janitor in the Twin Cities metro area," the report read.

The report quoted Marta Ponce, SEIU Local 26 member who works for ABM Building Maintenance: "I have been working part-time for ABM for five years, and I have been waiting for a full-time job that whole time. I need full-time because I need health insurance. The doctor says I need gall bladder surgery, but I can\'t afford it. I am in pain every day."

At the debriefing after Thursday morning\'s action, SEIU Local 26 program director Greg Nammacher gave the group an update about Ponce: "She finally went into the emergency and they took her immediately into surgery."

"What we\'re doing is not something abstract. It\'s not philosophical. It\'s about real people," Nammacher said.

That concern for real people seems to be missing from the perspective of at least some members of the BOMA group.

WIN member Rev. Nancy Anderson, who had registered for the BOMA meeting and sat at a breakfast table before the SEIU contingent came into the room, shared the conversations she overheard as BOMA members talked with each other.

"They had a long discussion about how the union is out for itself," Anderson reported. The union doesn\'t care about the janitors, Anderson heard, the union just wants money to administer a health plan for the janitors. "They affirmed each other," Anderson said.

The group participating in the action included SEIU Local 26 members and staff, leaders from other unions, clergy members and others from Workers Interfaith Network, and SEIU member-organizers from Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and Houston who have come to Minnesota to assist Local 26.

As they talked after the action in the SEIU offices, a poster on the wall featured a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.\'s famous 1963 "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." The quote read, in part: "You may well ask, why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue…"

"It\'s so fitting," said Anton Farmby, from SEIU Local 3 in Cleveland, who helped plan logistics for the day\'s action.

Steve Share edits the Minneapolis Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council.

For a few minutes, BOMA members sat quietly while they were addressed by members of the SEIU group.

SEIU members quickly left the building after someone from either BOMA or the country club began physically pushing members of the SEIU group.

Bryant Thomas, SEIU Local 26 member, holds open the door to the Golden Valley Country Club as SEIU members and supporters rush in to crash a breakfast meeting of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA). SEIU Local 26 wants BOMA members to intervene in SEIU\'s contract negotiations with cleaning contractors.

Michelle Sommers, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, was one of the group of about 40 SEIU members and supporters who participated in the action.

Police arrived as the SEIU group left the building. Left to right: Greg Nammacher, SEIU Local 26 program director; Rev. Doug Mork and Rev. Nancy Anderson, Workers Interfaith Network.

The SEIU group had placed flyers on cars in the Golden Valley Country Club parking lot.

As members of the SEIU group debriefed after the action, a poster on the wall featured a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.\'s 1963 "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." The quote read, in part: "You may well ask, why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issues." Minneapolis Labor Review photos

For more information
A PDF file of the report "Janitors Outlook: Twin Cities Property Market Services Report," can be found on the Local 26 website:
http://www.seiu26.org/docUploads/2007%20Janitors%20Outlook%20Report.pdf