Terms of the agreement include wage increases of 16 to 18 percent, which SEIU says makes Denver one of the highest-paying cities for janitors.
Teresa Noriega yells into a megaphone, rallying with Service Employees International Union members as local janitors vote to unionize at a picket line on California Street downtown. July 23, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Denver janitors have come to a tentative agreement with city cleaning companies, averting a strike.
On Tuesday, janitorial workers part of Service Employees International Union Local 105 voted to authorize a strike if a deal was not reached by Sunday. The union said janitors are underpaid and overworked, and face retaliation if workers do not finish unrealistic workloads.
The union reached a tentative agreement with city cleaning companies on Saturday, which they say makes Denver one of the highest-paying cities for janitors in the country.
Terms of the agreement include wage increases of 16 to 18 percent, guaranteed paid sick leave and increased investment in a fund for employee education.
“This contract will put us on a path to livable wages and raises the bar for our industry across the country,” janitorial worker Verónica Escobedo said in a statement. “Through the power of our union, we stayed united and made our jobs better. This is a massive victory. We’re glad we avoided having to go on strike, and we’re ready to keep working every day to keep our communities clean and safe.”
The new contract covers 2,400 janitors working in over 1,500 buildings across the metro area. Janitors will vote to ratify the contract next week.
Eva Martinez has worked as a janitor in Denver for the past 30 years, much of that spent cleaning Republic Plaza, the tallest building in Colorado.
Before the pandemic, a group of 26 janitors cleaned the building’s 56 floors. Now, that staff is made up of just a dozen people.
“We’ve just seen our workloads go up tremendously and we feel like we’re just not being respected or treated right,” Martinez said in Spanish through a translator. “We are essential workers. We don’t feel like we’re being treated that way.”
That’s why Martinez is prepared to go on strike if necessary, alongside fellow members of Service Employees International Union Local 105. The union represents more than 2,400 janitorial workers in Denver.
The workers’ current contract expires on Sunday, which means union representatives are spending their days at the negotiating table with a number of companies that employ Denver’s janitors.
Maria Hernandez shouts, “Si se puede!” as she casts a vote with other local janitors to unionize, during a Service Employees International Union rally downtown. July 23, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
On Tuesday, union members voted unanimously that they would be willing to strike if the two parties do not reach a deal in time. Approval to strike does not necessarily mean workers will go on strike, but it gives the negotiating team leverage at the bargaining table if the two sides do not reach a deal.
Tuesday morning, a few dozen janitors with SEIU gathered in downtown Denver to vote and drum up support for workers.
The mood at 17th Street and California Street was joyous. Workers played music and shouted chants including, “Sí, se puede,” or “Yes you can,” a Spanish labor motto dating back to labor organizing on behalf of farm workers in the 1970s.
Surrounding the workers were some of Denver’s tallest buildings, many of which they personally have cleaned for years. Cars driving by honked in support of the janitors as people cast ballots.
According to union members, the two of the most important issues are wages and workload, plus concerns of retaliation or job loss if workers do not finish unrealistic workloads.
“I personally don’t think with what the companies are talking to us, what they’re offering us, any janitor will be able to live and work in Denver,” Martinez said in Spanish. “What they’re offering us truly is miserable, and that’s why I’m here and I’m standing strong with all my coworkers.”
At the other side of the bargaining table is a group of employers that provide janitorial services to commercial buildings in Denver.
John Nesse is a lawyer working on behalf of the employers organized in a group called Denver Maintenance Contractors Association.
“Our current agreement includes industry-leading wages and benefits, including health insurance and paid time off,” Nesse said in a statement to Denverite.
Service Employees International Union members rally with local janitors as they vote to unionize, at a picket line on California Street downtown. July 23, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
The union’s requests for pay, health care and paid time off increases would “add significant cost” for the employers in a turbulent economy for the commercial real estate industry, Nesse said in the statement.
Commercial properties have struggled since the pandemic, with office vacancy rates continuing to rise downtown.
“As we negotiate this contract, the employers are mindful of the economic challenges currently facing the Denver commercial office market,” Nesse wrote. “We are committed to negotiating an agreement in the mutual interest of all parties — including our employees, our customers, and our cleaning companies. We are disappointed that the union is threatening to strike, but we will continue to negotiate in good faith until a new agreement is reached.”
Cost of living is a big concern for Denver’s janitors, many of whom make minimum wage.
Ruben Rivera has faced these challenges working as a janitor in Denver for nearly 20 years.
“My family is constantly struggling to figure out just the basics,” Rivera said in Spanish through a translator. “We’re constantly having to decide, what can we do? Can we pay the rent? Can we be able to put food on the table?”
Stephanie Felix-Sowy, president of SEIU Local 105, said that workers feel conditions and affordability have worsened in recent years.
Maria Hernandez (center) chants with Service Employees International Union members, as they rally and as local janitors like her vote to unionize. July 23, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“I always ask my members this in every one of our contracts. ‘Would you refer this position to any of your family or friends?’” Felix-Sowy said. “That has changed over the last four or five years to where now they’re saying ‘No, I tell them to go look for work somewhere else. I used to, but that’s no longer the case.’”
The advocacy is particularly important to Denver’s Latino community, Felix-Sowy said.
“Ninety percent of our members are Latina immigrant women, predominantly, majority Spanish speaking,” she said. “Our members feel like they’re part of the fabric of the city. They’re part of the immigrant fabric, but just general fabric of the city, and they take a ton of pride in the fact that they have for decades now held up this industry.”
As politicians talk about revitalizing downtown, janitors say they’re a crucial part of that goal and that their contract should reflect that.
Multiple union members and supporters mentioned Mayor Mike Johnston’s State of the City from the day before. The mayor had talked about making downtown vibrant after a pandemic that left many office buildings and streets empty.
Denver Clerk and Recorder Paul López stopped by Tuesday’s rally. He worked as a janitor in Denver and organized with the union before his election to City Council and later to the Clerk and Recorder’s Office.
Teresa Noriega yells into a megaphone, rallying with Service Employees International Union members as local janitors vote to unionize at a picket line on California Street downtown. July 23, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“Yesterday I was sitting on the stage at the State of the City and I heard a lot of talk about downtown,” he said. “I heard a lot of talk about making downtown livable and safe and making it a downtown for all. It starts right here with making sure that janitors that are maintaining downtown and other workers from our community that are building downtown, that they could also afford to live here too.”
López recalled cleaning concourses at Mile High Stadium in his teens, working 12 hour days without overtime and helping his father finish shifts without pay because the workload was too high.
“There’s always a fight not just to maintain the contract that you fought for years, since the eighties actually, but that you move that forward, that those conditions continue to improve” he said.
Editor’s note: This article was updated with the results of Tuesday’s strike vote.
Shortly after Maria Hernandez came from Mexico to the United States in 1985, she got her first and only job in this country: working the night shift as a janitor.
For nearly four decades, she cleaned 12 floors of a downtown Denver office building where the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment does business.
Now she plans to retire in a few months.
But first, she’s helping negotiate a contract for better wages, health care and retirement benefits for the more than 2,300 unionized janitors who work downtown. More than 90 percent of them are also Latina immigrants.
Janitors need more money and benefits to live in Denver, the union argues. But the city’s downtown office economy has taken a beating, and raising pay and benefits could be challenging in this market, their employers argue.
For Hernandez, these fights are nothing new.
An early member of the Denver Justice for Janitors campaign, she has spent decades fighting for better working conditions and struggled for a higher minimum wage citywide.
She’s marched in the streets, picketed and gone on strike. She was even arrested during a protest for “making too much noise,” she said in Spanish, and she’s proud of it.
Now, as her career comes to an end, Hernandez is willing to fight again if it means better working conditions for women like her, struggling to make enough money to raise families in this city, to pay rent and maybe even retire.
Working away from family, for unknown bosses
Hernandez worked hard for her family, getting by on near-minimum wage earnings.
She scrubbed toilets in dozens of bathrooms a day, threw out the trash, vacuumed the floors. She’s one of the longest-employed people in the building where she works, yet among those who get the least recognition and compensation.
She doesn’t know the people she works for. Not the bosses, not even most of the employees of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment whose messes she tidies.
A view of the building that houses the Colorado Department of Labor downtown. June 14, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Her schedule makes her an invisible part of their lives. After all, the workers in the building are long gone, back home with their friends and families, when she’s getting started, making sure they have a nice place to conduct business.
Over her 38-year career, she raised three children who all still live in Denver: one daughter who now works with people with disabilities, another who remodels pools and a son who works in a law firm.
While they were growing up, she’d leave her home in the Lincoln Park neighborhood for work before they’d get back from school. She would return from work while they were still asleep.
She lost precious time with her kids.
“It is difficult, but one needs to work to survive,” she told Denverite, standing outside the highrise she cleans before a Friday night shift in June.
These days, her kids tell her they’re grateful for the life she provided, even if it was hard for them to be apart from their mother so often.
Now that retirement is approaching, can she afford it?
Her family has lived in the same house for decades, though her kids have moved on. Her husband passed away recently, and she’s shouldering the bills on a paycheck that doesn’t match Denver’s cost of living.
And rent has gone up mightily. Her family paid roughly $500 in rent decades ago. Now, without her husband, she pays more than $2,000 a month.
After 35 years, Hernandez’s pay is just a little over a dollar higher than Denver’s minimum wage of $18.29.
Maria Hernandez stands outside of the downtown building where she works as a janitor. June 14, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
On the eve of retirement, Hernandez is not certain she can afford to stay here. Denver’s too expensive, and she hasn’t been able to save enough to make it without working.
“It’s sad,” she said.
She’s considering moving to another state or even back to Mexico, where the cost of living is lower. But she’d hate to leave her kids.
“There you can own your own house,” she said. “Here you have to rent.”
Her hours haven’t changed after all these years, but the workload has.
Since the pandemic, the downtown offices have emptied out. Many janitors lost their jobs. Hernandez was among those who stayed, shouldering extra work.
Even with lots of chatter about downtown coming back to life, the office buildings have not been restaffed to pre-pandemic levels. The janitors still employed have been doing extra labor without significant raises.
The work itself is tiring and, for some, dangerous.
“Many times the chemicals are very strong,” she said. “They give people allergic reactions. There are people who have been unable to work because of what the chemicals do.”
What do the bosses do to help?
“It’s not important to the owners that the chemicals they give you make you sick or hurt you,” she said.
Marching for better pay and benefits
Hernandez was voted by more than 2,400 janitors in Service Employees International Union Local 105 to represent them in contract negotiations with multiple companies charged with keeping downtown offices clean, including CCS Facility Services, ABM and Master Klean.
The workers are demanding better pay, health insurance and retirement benefits.
The negotiations launched on June 17. Janitors marched alongside other SEIU members, labor activists and State Rep. Tim Hernandez.
“We know that when workers who are directly impacted have improved conditions that everything around them becomes improved,” Rep. Hernandez said to a cheering crowd.
Tim Hernandez speaks at an SEIU Local 105 rally for janitors, outside Union Station, on June 17, 2024. Kyle Harris / Denverite
Stephanie Felix-Sowy, President of SEIU Local 105, said the group was fighting for higher wages, better health care benefits, and retirement packages.
Discussions began Monday morning and were slated to continue until later in the day.
“With the growth in Denver, and with the kind of revitalization efforts in the downtown, our members feel like they’ve been left behind at this point,” Felix-Sowy said. “And so this is our opportunity to really concentrate on what are fair wages, competitive wages, where we can attract and retain folks in this industry.”
Downtown office building owners have been struggling after the pandemic.
John Nesse, the attorney who represents the six companies united in negotiations under the name Denver Janitorial Contractors, says the city center’s commercial real estate market is hurting.
While he declined to comment on specific points in the negotiation, he suggested that the market isn’t favorable to expensive changes in the contracts.
“The Denver office market has a record high vacancy rate right now, and like a lot of office markets, it’s struggling,” Nesse said. “So we expect that that will have an impact on these negotiations.”
A view of the building that houses the Colorado Department of Labor downtown. June 14, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
There are already eight meetings on the calendar between the union and Nesse.
“We’re very early in the process, and you know, our goal is to negotiate a contract that reflects the realities of the Denver market, and to do that in a way that ends with a handshake with the union and an agreement before the expiration of the contract,” he said.
What’s next for contract negotiations
While both parties hope to reach an amenable agreement by the contract’s expiration on July 28, that isn’t guaranteed.
Is Hernandez optimistic the contract will favor the janitors?
“Hopefully,” she said.
If the contract expires and a deal hasn’t been struck, workers could walk off the job in protest — an outcome neither party wants.
But the union is ready to fight for the long haul for better wages and benefits.
“If the owners of the companies do not want to accept what the people are asking of them,” she said, “we are ready to go on strike.”
Maria Hernandez, a Denver janitor, participates in an SEIU Local 105 rally outside Union Station, on June 17, 2024. Kyle Harris / Denverite
