SAN FRANCISCO – Security officers preparing to strike for their rights received full backing from the San Francisco Central Labor Council’s 150 affiliated labor unions today including the sanitation workers, stationary engineers, building and construction trades, parking attendants, UPS delivery drivers, window cleaners and janitors. The executive committee of the labor council voted unanimously to grant strike sanctions to honor SEIU Local 24/7 picket lines.
“Security officers are standing up for their rights and for the rights of all working people in San Francisco. The Labor council and its affiliates call on the private security firms to stop violating the National Labor Relations Act,” said Tim Paulson, Executive Director of the San Francisco Central Labor Council.
The city’s real estate giants have agreed to compensate building engineers, window cleaners, parking attendants, janitors and other service workers in their buildings with family health care, wages you can raise a family on, paid sick days, paid holidays, paid vacations, paid bereavement leave and pensions for retirement security. Only private security officers – who are predominately African American – are being left behind.
“Security officers are being treated like second class citizens,” said Robert Morales, Secretary Treasurer of the sanitation workers united in Teamsters Local 350 and the Teamsters Joint Council 7. “When security officers strike for their rights, sanitation workers are committed to stop all trash pick-ups in the buildings and not cross picket lines.”
At an afternoon rally in the financial district to announce the strike sanctions, Rev. Ted Frazier other clergy, civil rights leaders and elected leaders called on San Francisco’s leading real estate giants like Morgan Stanley and security companies like Securitas to end the double standards that keep private security officers living in poverty.
Private security companies like Securitas respect neither the law nor the basic economic needs of security officers. Security officers in the Bay Area earn about $23,500 a year, well under half the measure of self-sufficiency standard of $53,412 set by the Economic Policy Institute for a family of four in San Francisco. A security officer would have to work more than 100 hours each week just to meet the cost of housing, food, transportation, health care, child care, pay taxes and meet other basic necessities.
Security officers earn on average $5/hour less that union janitors in the same buildings. Janitors receive free family health care through their full time employment. Security officers are offered health plans most simply cannot afford and many are forced to make impossible decisions like buying medication or paying the rent.
“We’re honoring the security officers’ fight to stop the security companies from violating their legal rights and to improve their jobs and their lives,” said Albert Lopez of the window cleaners’ union. “We’ll stop work to support our brothers and sisters until security officers’ civil rights are respected and honored.”
If the city’s leading real estate corporations would agree to compensate security officers as they do the janitors in the same buildings, it would bring more than an estimated $30 million more a year into the Bay Area’s most impoverished communities like the Tenderloin and West Oakland, where most security officers live.
The Stand for Security Coalition includes A. Philip Randolph Institute; Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; Martin Luther King Legacy Association; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Rev. James Lawson, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Sen. John Edwards; U.S. House of Representatives Rep. Laura Richardson; Rep. Maxine Waters; Rep. Diane Watson; Rep. Barbara Lee and more.