PEN-Lers,
Actually, Apple (against their will) has become a model employer of their
janitorial staff. After a massive mobilization by SEIU and their Justice
for Janitors campaign, including a threatened worldwide boycott of Apple
computer, Apple conceded to the unions demands. Apple forced its landlord
to hire a union contractor and Hewlett Packard almost immediately signed
union contracts without a fight. With Oracle (or rather its landlord)
agreeing to hire union workers with decent benefits, Silicon Valley is
almost 100% unionized in the janitorial sector. This is one of the most
dramatic accomplishments in unionization in many years.
Following this success, SEIU has teamed up with a number of other unions
(HERE, the Teamsters, ACTWU, maybe a couple others) to begin a mass
community-wide organizing drive in San Jose. The unions involved
have deployed 20 organizers and fourteen apprentices from the AFL-CIO
Organizing Institute. Most innovatively, the unions are not beginning in
the workplace but starting door-knocking in the ethnic communities around
the area to create a mass community base as they target multiple
industries all at once. They are knocking on 1400 doors each day, 10,000
doors a week. The goal is to build a mass community base, then blitz
low-wage service and light-manufacturing throughout the San Jose area.
For me, it is one of the most exciting union campaigns in existence,
since it involved not only multi-union collaboration but a serious
application of community organizing as a method of union organizing.
And much of this campaign is ultimately derived from the capitulation of
Apple Computer to the original community-based campaign against the company.
**************************************************
* Nathan Newman: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* UC-Berkeley *
On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Jon Coifman wrote:
> As long as we're at it, it should also be noted that Apple has a less than
> stellar record on union activities among the janitorial staff at its
> Cupertino, CA headquarters. Memory has not been kind regarding the
> datails, but my recollection is that the decision to dump a contract with a
> unionized maintance firm about a year and a half ago caused quite a flap.
> Perhaps somone on the net remembers the outcome.
>
> Jon Coifman,
> (via Macintosh)
> Austin, TX
>
>
>
