Workers who clean retail stores march for justice

At the end of the march, workers, allies, faith leaders, and elected officials gathered to announce Supervalu as the primary target of the workers’ campaign for justice in retail cleaning.

The march was organized by “Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha” (CTUL), which means “Center of Workers United in Struggle.” CTUL is a worker-outreach initiative of the labor-faith coalition Workers Interfaith Network.

Retail cleaning workers marched down Lake Street, ending at the Cub and Target stores at Lake and Minnehaha. Workday Minnesota photos

“Corporations responsible for pitting cleaning companies against each other which results in plummeting wages and increased workloads,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with CTUL. “The only way to stop this is for these retail chains to meet with workers to establish fair standards. These poor working conditions affect everyone in our communities. Today, we stand together to demand that Supervalu steps up and agrees to a fair Code of Conduct for retail cleaning workers.”

Over the past ten years, corporate retail stores have centralized control over store cleaning contracts in order to decrease wages by almost $4 per hour for workers who clean stores, Mendez said. This corporate strategy has more than doubled workloads for cleaners.

On April 25, retail cleaning workers from CTUL sent a letter to retail chain stores including Target, SuperValu and Lunds & Byerly’s, informing them of the serious violations of human rights taking place in retail cleaning. In this letter and in other communications, workers and allies requested a meeting with the companies to discuss ways to end these abuses. The requests have been refused, workers said.

Cleaning workers make $7.25 an hour.	The CEO of Target makes $9,000 an hour.

Abuses of retail cleaning workers are taking place all over the country, CTUL said, citing these examples:

In July 2010 a slavery ring was uncovered in retail cleaning in the Northeast, involving workers who cleaned at Target, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Safeway and other locations.

In a settlement reached in federal court in Maryland in 2009, retail cleaning workers were awarded up to $3.8 million in compensation for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act by their employers.

In 2007 the United States Department of Labor carried out an investigation against failure to pay proper overtime to retail cleaning workers based in Minnesota. The USDOL found 106 violations totaling over $25,000 in unpaid wages.

Mario Colloly, a retail cleaning worker said: “Many years ago at the stores I clean, some workers made up to $11 or $12 an hour. Now the workforce has been reduced, our workload has nearly doubled and many cleaning workers are barely making minimum wage. But it’s not just us, this problem is happening across the industry…. If we don’t do heading a hundred miles an hour down a very slippery slope.”

For more information
Visit the CTUL website.