Houston Janitors Win Strike

Janitors in Houston won an important victory on Monday Nov. 20th, under direction of their union, the SEIU. Now, for the first time, Houston's downtown janitors will be under a contract. Over the next three years, their pay will go up gradually from minimum wage to $7.75, and they will get more benefits and hours. These were people trying to live in Houston on $20 a day, as most janitors were limited to four hours of work, so that the employers could avoid paying benefits. They fought injustice and won, demonstrating to Latinos and others the value of unity and organization. For a period of three weeks, the janitors dominated downtown, with marches, rallies, press conferences, civil disobedience, chanting and drumming. Other oppressed groups can learn from their example. When groups are unwilling to give something wanted by someone, there have arisen two general methods to convince them to do so. One is violence or a threat of violence, and the other is a rightful demand accompanied by a willingness to take on extra suffering. When George Bush wants something from you, he threatens to kick your ass, but Gandhi would threaten to kick his own. The janitors, obviously, were using tactics from the Gandhi playbook. The struggle included janitors spending nights in jail under particularly harsh conditions (there have been reports of janitors being singled out for physical abuse by guards), attacks on those committing civil disobedience by Houston police on horseback (sending an 83 year old woman to the hospital), and much money spent, flying supporters in from all over the country.

Why did it require such a battle (and all the publicity that goes with it) for the janitors to get what they deserved? One might hope that for moral, or even purely financial reasons, the strike could have been resolved before it began. However, as in our attack and occupation of Iraq, there is an aspect of machismo on the part of the oppressors to try to get away with inflicting as much damage as they can.

Police attacked workers doing non-violent civil disobedience. The individual officers were improvising a bit, but they were also clearly receiving orders from above. Somehow, their power structure told them: "The janitors don't seem to mind getting arrested, so step up the pressure. Make things more uncomfortable for them." This message trickled down from the building and business owners, and from people annoyed that traffic was blocked as they tried to drive home. Their annoyance translated into the police being granted wider scope to create suffering. I saw cops writing jay-walking tickets to an old woman who was trying to follow instructions. Prosecutors followed suit, trying to set bail for those committing civil disobedience at $888,888 instead of the usual $500 for that type of offense.

In addition to these hard forms of oppression, there are other forms that are internal and psychological. Those benefiting from the janitors' labor might seek ways to ignore or justify the oppression. Houstonians wrote angry letters to local papers or on local blogs, saying that blocking traffic should be punished with stiff sentences. Those confronted by the demonstrations used the term "illegal aliens" to justify treating people unfairly, without any knowledge of the actual immigration status of those they sought to write off. The irony here is that if you only pay someone $20 a day, you have created a job that is so difficult for any US resident that you create a market for "illegal" labor. Many Houstonians convinced themselves that the benefit they derive from workers who have been forced to work part-time is not morally problematic, but that somehow, non-violent civil disobedience is. Our system is set up so efficiently to silence its victims, that even when they find their voices, we have many ways to ignore them.

The janitors won their battle, though they still deserve much more than they got. The police, the prosecutors and many who witnessed their struggle acted horribly, but that is the luxury of their power or class privilege. The victors can celebrate for a moment, as they leave the streets and return to cleaning the toilets of the vanquished.