Si Se Puede: Houston Janitors Rise Up

Posted on Sep 30, 2009 Posted by decolonize

Houston has been at the center of an intense struggle by organized labor. While the AFL-CIO and SEIU have led important initiatives in the Houston/Galveston region, the janitors' strike -- involving mostly Latino, grossly underpaid custodial workers employed in downtown Houston -- made national news headlines after a successful strike, winning important concessions. Janitors are preparing to return to the negotiating table, and union organizing is returning to the local debate.

by decolonize

In 2006, janitors in Houston stood up against oppressive work conditions, horrible pay and no benefits with a strike that drew national attention. The janitors -- most hailing from countries across the Central American and Latin American spectrum -- forced their bosses to make many concessions. But that agreement is set to expire in November, and janitors will have to meet with their employers again.

An upsurge of labor activism is happening now, with workers demanding a fair share from their bosses. Union activists in Houston and across the United States say corporations are using the economy and the recession as excuses to avoid paying fair wages, to cut benefits and extend work hours.

Houston organizers have taken a similar approach to arguing against cutbacks. The upcoming Houston janitors contract convention is dubbed “Building an Economy that Works for Everyone.” One of the janitors' most visible supporters, Joseph A. Fiorenza, archbishop emeritus of Houston, wrote in a recent letter, "Whatever shape the economy might be in, people of good will are still called upon to ensure the well-being of every member of our community — especially the poor and vulnerable."

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have made efforts in Texas to support labor in its calls for working families to receive what they're due.

Journalist Charlie Davidson wrote about Richard Trumka, the new president of the AFL-CIO, who spoke at the recent G-20 Pittsburgh protests. Trumka put his perspective on labor and recession this way:

The neoliberals of both parties, he continued, have tried to put labor and its allies "in a policy box with six sides"—labor ‘flexibility,' shareholder value primacy, globalization/ off shoring, ‘personal' responsibility over all, small government to a fault, and economic ‘stability,' meaning austerity for us. He explained the hidden trap and fallacy in each one of these.

Revolutionaries have struggled with how to relate to labor struggles, union organizing and worker movements. During the 2006 Houston janitors' actions, the Revolutionary Communist Party was among groups that refused to partake in this struggle, but instead stood to the side selling newspapers and attempted to recruit in ways both ineffective and insulting. In the end, they stopped relating to the movement, equating participation of communists in economic struggles as being the same as focusing the attention of workers on their own oppression, referred to generally as "economism." They are unable to distriguish between economic struggle and economism, two seprate things.

Mike Ely of the Kasama Project puts the importance of understanding issues like the Houston janitors' movement this way:

Often the collapse of economic conditions makes it harder to win short-term demands from individual employers — and that simple reality affects the decisions of workers to take up that kind of action. In many cases, it is the lifting of the crisis that opens the floodgates of economic struggle (that was certainly a big element in the U.S. experience).

And the emergence of such a movement would be an important development for the U.S. (and for communists). Just as early Maoists sent organizers into the coalfields, and the auto plants, and the garment shops and so one…. so we should consider becoming part of such a wave of resistance as it emerges.

But we should do that with a rather sharp and communist appreciation of the dangers of economism — which have played themselves out graphically in the 1930s and then again in the 1970s. Major sections of the new communist movement picked up the economist politics of the old 1930s CPUSA, and tried to implement them again in the 1970s. And the results were different, but disastrous both times. And the lessons affirm Lenin’s basic point.

People wage diverse struggles over their the hardships they face in life. Houston's janitors fought for changes in wages, work conditions and more. While it is crucial to understand how complex these movements are (dialectics), one cannot disassociate from popular movements.

The Houston janitors' contract convention happens Saturday, October 10, 12-2 p.m. at the Hilton Houston Post Oak, 2001 Post Oak Boulevard in the Galleria area.