The rally for affordable health care and full-time jobs will start at 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, at the downtown YWCA, 1130 Nicollet Mall.

On Dec. 1, negotiators representing cleaning contractors walked away from the bargaining table after only four sessions. With no issues resolved, the cleaning contractors are refusing to continue direct talks and requesting the involvement of a federal mediator.

Service Employees International Union Local 26, the union representing janitors who clean downtown office buildings, said the companies left without addressing the janitors’ counter-proposals on non-economic issues and without proposing any economic and health care improvements of their own. The current contract expires Dec. 31.

At issue are health care and full-time work, the union said. Seventy-five percent of Twin Cities janitors do not have health insurance through their employer. The consequence is a large – and growing – tab for taxpayers, the unions said. For example, at Hennepin County Medical Center, the only public hospital in the seven-county metropolitan area, uncompensated care costs from 2003 to 2004 rose 38%, from $22.8 million to $31.4 million.

"Health care is a big problem for working people in Minnesota," said Marta Ponce, a janitor with American Building Maintenance who has no health care. "How can we fix this problem if our employers won\'t even talk to us?"

In recent months, janitors in Chicago, Miami, and Houston have made great strides in health care and full-time work. Most notably, Houston janitors won, for the first time ever, guarantees of more work hours and affordable family health care. By contrast, Twin Cities cleaning companies have proposed eliminating full-time jobs and refuse to discuss the janitors\' proposal to find common-sense solutions to the health care crisis, the union said.

This year\'s contract campaign is taking place under the theme "Justice for Janitors."

After the Saturday rally, janitors and their families will walk in the Holidazzle Parade. The aim is to raise visibility of janitors, who often work at night after office workers have gone home.

"We want people to know that their offices are cleaned by real people, not by magical elves," says Jamilo Ali, a janitor at Marsden Building Maintenance.

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