She Has News To Tell

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by Paul Bass | Mar 31, 2006 9:11 am

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Posted to: Business/Labor/ Economic Development

Downtown janitor Sandra Fuentes stood at the corner of Church and Elm Streets to deliver the news to compadres leaving work: Their drive to organize downtown custodians has picked up speed.

Fuentes, who cleans City Hall, stood by the newspaper vending machines at rush hour Thursday afternoon to distribute her own Spanish-language publication called La Voz De Los Trabajadojadores. Published by SEIU Local 32BJ, it reports on the latest progress of a unionizing drive aimed at the workers, many of them Latin American immigrants, who clean buildings in the central business district. The “Justice for Janitors” drive aims to obtain health insurances and salaries above minimum wage for 350 downtown custodians. It follows successful similar SEIU drives in Hartford and Fairfield Counties. So far the drive has unionized 4,500 janitors elsewhere in the state; they now earn an average of $10.50 an hour, and the vast majority have health insurance. (Phone number for the campaign in New Haven: 773-0071.)

The publication distributed by Fuentes Thursday featured the photos of 60 downtown janitors who have signed on in the first three months as “leaders” of the New Haven drive. They work in such buildings as 265 Church St. and 300 George St.

“We should be able to finish this [drive] in a couple of months,” reported Managua-born Ivan Almendarez (at left in photo), the drive’s most visible organizer. Almendarez and fellow organizers have brought their banners to photo ops for the gubernatorial campaign of New Haven Mayor John DeStefano. “DeStefano’s taking care of the landlords for us,” Almendarez said. “We have a lot of political support.”

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