The horses just kept coming.

The rate of pay for a janitor in oil-rich Houston’s business district is $5.15 an hour — $20 a day – a wage that would be illegal in Wisconsin, where a janitor in downtown Milwaukee starts at nearly double the Houston wage.  Oil giant Chevron, downtown Houston’s corporate leader, posted $14 billion in profits last year and, in one minute, makes more than the entire annual earnings of all of Houston’s 5,300 janitors.

Houston janitors went on strike 25 days ago, fighting for higher wages and health insurance as they negotiate their first union contract as members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which organized the janitors last year.  In the thick of the fray are four Milwaukeeans: SEIU janitors Heberto Figueroa, Josue Rivera and Juan Becerra, and SEIU Local 1-Wisconsin field rep. Dave Somerscales, also a Watchdog Milwaukee contributor.

The janitors and Local 1 are up against skinflint cleaning companies such as One Source and American Building Maintenance (both contracting in the Milwaukee market) and some of America’s richest corporations – Chevron and JP Morgan/Chase to name two – that have padded their profits by creating and exploiting one of the lowest wage markets in the US.

This week, the union escalated the campaign with a series of civil actions to call on corporate Houston to intervene to end the strike. On Wednesday, 14 organizers handcuffed themselves to the entrance of Chevron’s office complex as part of a national Day of Action and were arrested.
Click here to view Dave's on-scene YouTube video. 

Somerscales was arrested with 11 other organizers and charged with a Class B Misdemeanor in the union’s first civil action two weeks ago and will be in Houston municipal court today.

"This is about changing an entire market," Somerscales said from a Houston hotel room.  "What we're seeing is that the companies that created the market don't want it to change."

To this end, the building owners and the cleaning companies have pointed the finger of blame at each other.  The cleaning contractors say the building owners have tied their hands and won’t tolerate higher pay standards in the market.  Chevron, JP Morgan/Chase and other building operators say the dispute is between the union and the cleaning contractors, and it’s not their problem.  

The majority of the Houston cleaners are Mexican immigrants.

"This is also about immigrant workers not accepting the slave wages they’ve been paid for years,” Somerscales said.  "These companies thought the workers would be good, quiet brown people and go on cleaning the buildings [after their wage demands were not met].  But that's over.  The workers will never go back to those days."

UPDATE 11/19:  46 people were arrested in Thursday's protest as tensions escalate in Houston. SEIU is planning a national action day to build support for the janitors, whose struggle for better pay and health insurance has exposed Houston as one of the worst poverty wage markets in the US. As the strike enters its fifth week, SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff, lead negotiator for the janitors, is calling on "Houston’s building owners and managers to use their power to settle the strike and commit to using only responsible cleaning firms willing to help janitors and their families rise out of poverty."