MIDTOWN — Hemmed in by barricades and brandishing purple and yellow flags, hundreds of union workers, joined by Rev. Al Sharpton, rallied in Midtown on Wednesday afternoon to drum up support in their ongoing fight for higher wages as a strike looms.
The workers from Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ on hand at the protest on Seventh Avenue and 53rd Street included some of the 22,000 commercial building office cleaners who will be impacted by a contract set to expire on Dec. 31.
The union has been involved in talks with the Realty Advisory Board for Labor Relations (RAB), which represents building owners in the negotiations, for more than a month now as the two sides have tried to agree on the terms of a new deal.
Time is now running out, and union workers and building owners have until Dec. 30 to sign a new contract. If that deadline passes without a deal, the union workers have pledged to strike.
One main sticking point preventing a consensus, according to union spokesman Matt Nerzig, is a proposed wage increase.
“We’re looking for raises. We’re looking to keep their wages in line with the cost-of-living increases,” Nerzig said.
Nerzig declined to specify how much more the workers are asking for, but one woman at the rally put the requested increase at between 2 and 4 percent over current salaries.
According to the RAB, each worker currently receives a compensation package worth about $77,000 a year, which includes salary, medical benefits and pension fund contributions.
Another problem, Nerzig continued, is a push by building owners to create a “second tier” of workers whose wages would start and be capped at lower levels than those of existing union employees.
That would create an environment in which older, higher paid workers would be pushed out, in favor of their cheaper counterparts, Nerzig added.
“There’s no way we’ll agree to a ‘second tier,’” he said.
Ismeta Mrkulic, 42, who cleans offices inside the Paramount building at 1633 Broadway, she said she attended the rally to help in the fight for a fair contract.
“We have children we have to support,” Mrkulic said. “But they think we’re getting too much.”
Howard Rothschild, president of the RAB, said that building service workers in New York City are “the highest paid building service workers in the country, and we’re not looking to change that.”
But, Rothschild continued, the economic climate has changed since his organization’s last negotiation with the union workers in 2008. Rents today are half what they used to be and vacancies stand at about half 2008 levels, he said.
“So we need to create an economic agreement in this case that reflects today’s economic realities,” Rothschild added.
At the end of the rally, the Rev. Al Sharpton wove his way through the crowd and pledged his support, offering to do whatever is necessary—including “civil disobedience.”
“They [the RAB] are trying to stifle democracy, and they’re trying to put a permanent poverty status on these office workers, so we’re here to support them,” Sharpton said. “This is, in my opinion, an insult to all of us that have offices in New York City and that have working class members in our family.”
