A year after he lost his job, and two weeks after a judge
ruled that he should be allowed to return to work, Julio Mercedes of Passaic is
still waiting.
He's eager to get back to 1 Meadowlands Plaza, the East
Rutherford office building where he cleaned the cafeteria, hallways and
first-floor lobby for 15 years, until a new owner awarded the cleaning contract
to a non-union company that replaced Mercedes and his union-member colleagues.
But although an administrative law judge on July 13
ordered the new contractor, Eastern Essential Services Inc. of Fairfield, to
reinstate Mercedes and 17 other union workers who cleaned the building to their
former or similar jobs, that may not happen soon. The contractor has indicated
it will appeal, which could take years, unless the National Labor Relations
Board backs the union's effort for immediate reinstatement, which includes back
pay and benefits.
The case offers a window into the contentious and lengthy
disputes between unions, which seek to secure their members' rights under
federal labor laws, and employers, who try to resist what they see as the
inefficiency and higher costs that unionization brings.
The central issue was whether Eastern Essential Services
violated the law by refusing to negotiate with the union and refusing to hire
the union workers. Other disputes around North Jersey that have been fought
over workers rights under federal law center on union efforts to organize
non-union companies, and employers' refusals to renegotiate union contracts
when they expire.
Union-employer skirmishes have taken on importance in the
struggling New Jersey economy as companies have sought to reduce costs, and a
growing media and political focus on economic inequality and wage stagnation
has put the spotlight on pay rates at the bottom end of the scale.
The dispute touches a "very, very important"
topic for building owners, said Michael Allen Seeve, president of Mountain
Development Corp. of Woodland Park and former president of the commercial real
estate group NAIOP.
"Most commercial property owners do not want to see
their buildings go union, because it means that the costs go up and some of
their control goes down," he said. Yet owners also want stability and a
low turnover among the cleaning staff, he said.
"It's important because they have to be competitive
or they can't keep their buildings occupied," he said. "And they have
to have a good relationship with the cleaning people because the cleaning
people are one of the most important connections with the actual end users,"
the office occupants, he said.
Aug. 10 deadline
Attorneys for Eastern Essential Services did not respond
to requests for comment. On July 17, the company filed a request with the
National Labor Relations Board for an extension of the Aug. 10 deadline by
which it can file an appeal.
For the union, the judge's ruling provided a hard-fought
victory in an era of declining private sector union membership.
Kevin Brown, New Jersey state director for Service
Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which has 10,000 New Jersey members
and is growing, said the impact of the judge's ruling would likely be felt
across the industry, especially as the union begins negotiations in October for
a 2016 contract, which covers 7,000 office cleaners in 500 buildings in the
state. The union represents the cleaners in 85 percent of all office buildings
bigger than 100,000 square feet in New Jersey, he said.
"The industry should be clear — good jobs are here
to stay," Brown said of the case.
He said that although the union wages similar battles
regularly, the case involving 1 Meadowlands Plaza and two other buildings was
unique for the commitment of the workers and the relatively high number, 33 in
total, involved. Few unions pursue such cases, because the chances of success
are slim and they can take years, he said.
"Often workers will walk away, and say to hell with
it," he said.
The dispute erupted in June and July 2014, when the
cleaning contracts for the three buildings — the others were 300 Lighting Way
in Secaucus and 120 Mountainview Boulevard in Bernards Township — were switched
to Eastern Essential Services, away from two companies that employed workers in
Local 32BJ of the SEIU.
Several times in the weeks after the change, some of the
33 employees that formerly cleaned the three buildings tried to get jobs with
the incoming contactor, and the union sought to secure recognition from the
company as the employees' representative — to no avail, according to the court
ruling.
In one incident, for example, a cleaner at the East
Rutherford building reported for work to find that the contract had changed
hands, and she was told by an operations manager for Eastern Essential Services
that "the reason we are not accepting you is because you are with the
union," according to the opinion by Judge Stephen Davis, who heard the
case in Newark.
Federal law doesn't require a company that takes over a
contract to hire the employees of its predecessor, and requires it to recognize
the union that represented former workers only in certain circumstances, Davis
wrote. But by law, Eastern Essential Services couldn't refuse to hire the
workers just because they were tied to the union, he said in his ruling, which
concluded that was exactly what happened.
The judge said that if the contractor had hired the
former workers, it would also have had to recognize the union, because the law
requires a successor contractor to do so if a substantial number of the
formerly unionized employees are part of the new workforce.
Instead, Eastern Essential Services hired its own
employees, and "implemented its own terms and conditions for its employees
in the three buildings," Davis wrote. Jobs that previously paid $12.35 an
hour with benefits and sick and vacation time paid from $8.50 to $12 an hour,
without benefits, under Eastern Essential Services, he said.
Year of hard times
For Mercedes, 42, the job loss started a year of
hardship.
"It was a big headache," said Mercedes, who
works between 30 and 37 hours a week in a laundry but relied on the income from
the cleaning jobs, which he worked from 6 to 10 p.m. five days a week.
"With my work I could cover many expenses for my
family," he said, and send medicine and other assistance to his mother in
his home country, the Dominican Republican. "Now, I have to leave some
things aside. Now I can't buy as much food as I could before, because I don't
have enough money."
"I looked [for a job] a lot," he said. "But
I would always go, and [they'd say] at the moment we don't have anything. I'd
look, and I'd look, filling in forms in many places, but there was
nothing."
Teresa Hernandez, 62, of Union City, who cleaned the
Lighting Way building for 17 years, also said she has been unable to find
something to replace her job vacuuming floors, taking out trash and cleaning
the kitchen on the fifth floor of 300 Lighting Way.
She said her second job, working 28 hours a week in a
Burger King kitchen, didn't pay enough to support herself, her two
granddaughters, aged 10 and 8, and her daughter, who goes to college.
"It was very difficult," Hernandez said. She
said that after learning about the change in cleaning contractor at her old
job, she decided to accept a pay cut from $12.80 to $8.50 and tried to put in
an application to work for Eastern Essential Services — but she got nowhere.
Thursday gatherings
She said she has gotten by in the past year by borrowing
money from her sister to pay the bills. But she never gave up. She gathered
with a handful of other workers outside the Lighting Way building from 5 to 6
p.m. every Thursday to hand out leaflets and talk to people who worked in the
offices the ousted workers once cleaned.
"We did it to say to the public, and the people who
work there, to speak for us, and say that we need this work," Hernandez
said in Spanish. "I always had faith in God, and asked, in his heart, to
help us get back to work."
The effort was part of a wide-ranging campaign to
pressure Eastern Essential Services to take the workers back, in part by
targeting the owners of the buildings, Brown said. It included a newsletter
about the case distributed to the tenants of all the properties owned by one of
the owners, Rugby Realty, and numerous protests outside the buildings that were
sometimes attended by elected officials.
On Thursday evening, six workers, along with several of
their children and grandchildren, were once again outside the Lighting Way
building. This time, they held signs that said "We won," and they
handed out leaflets to office workers walking out of the building or emerging
from the parking lot that told of the judge's ruling. Some congratulated the
cleaning workers and hugged them, or honked their horns or gave a thumbs up as
they learned the news.
A woman who described herself as in marketing said she
had worked at the building for 12 years with the workers, and missed their
comforting presence.
"It's just the trust there," said the woman,
who declined to give her name. "At times, I have left my laptop on my desk
[without worrying]. You feel secure."
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