SILICON VALLEY – On the fourth day of a growing Bay Area strike, four hundred janitors were joined by faith and community leaders at a demonstration at Cisco Systems today as they called on the hi-tech industry powerhouse to support good jobs with adequate health care for all workers and their families. Janitors held a spirited rally and picketed briefly before leading a march through areas of Cisco’s sprawling corporate campus that periodically held up traffic in areas of San Jose and Milpitas.

“It’s unacceptable that Cisco Systems is failing to use its power as a bellwether and trendsetter in the hi-tech corridor to ensure janitors have jobs that permit them to do more than barely survive,” said Mike Garcia, President of SEIU Local 1877. “Silicon Valley’s corporate leaders have a moral responsibility to support much needed improvements in wages and health benefits for hard-working janitors—and for all working people.”

Silicon Valley boasts the highest average median income in the country yet area janitors are paid far less than janitors doing the same work earn in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. Despite servicing some of the most profitable industries and office properties in the state— including Intel, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Bishop Ranch, HP, Yahoo, and City Center—Silicon Valley/Bay Area janitors are paid just $23,000 a year—less than half of what the Center for Economic Policy reports it takes to survive in California. In addition, janitors must wait as long as 2 ½ years to receive family health care.

With take-home pay averaging less than $350 a week, it would take more then 77 percent of a janitor’s wages to pay rent on a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development fair market rates FY2008. As a result, many janitors must live multiple families in one household to survive.

“My husband and I work very hard but we’re paid so little we have to share a house with two other families. No one should have to live like this,” said Maria Lopez, the mother of four and a janitor at Cisco Systems for the past 9 years. “We can’t even begin to think of saving money—we live day to day.”

Contract talks for more than 6,000 janitors ended last Thursday with the Bay Area’s largest cleaning companies refusing after months of negotiations to propose even modest pay and benefit improvements to janitors. In addition, the cleaning companies are facing an investigation by the federal labor board over charges they illegally attempted to silence and intimidated janitors who have been speaking out for justice.

For more information about SEIU Local 1877 Justice for Janitors visit: www.seiu-usww.org.