SAN FRANCISCO – Security officers, janitors, clergy, community and elected leaders marched from the Tenderloin to the Financial District on Thursday afternoon to demonstrate the growing gap between the wealthy corporate real estate industry and the low-wage service workers that protect and clean multi-billion dollar buildings but go home to our city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.
For the first time ever, security officers united in SEIU across the country gathered in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco Wednesday night to develop and adopt a set of standards that all security officers will adhere to when bargaining with national and local security contractors in upcoming contract negotiations in San Francisco and other cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Washington D.C. and New York City. Nationwide, the lives of up to 50,000 low-wage, private security officers – mostly African American – will be improved as a result of the contract negotiations that began yesterday between San Francisco Bay Area security officers and the private security industry.
“We’re standing up for workers everywhere who put in a hard day’s work -- only to then go to the second job and work all night, too!” said Richard Bucher. “We’re coming together to do what it takes to win a better life for ourselves, and our families.” Bucher is a husband, father of two and one of 5,000 San Francisco Bay Area security officers united in SEIU Local 24/7. Private security officers’ wages and benefits are kept so low by the corporate real estate industry that most security officers are forced to work more than one job just to make ends meet.
If the wealthy corporate real estate industry would agree to just $1 an hour increase in wages, paid time off, and family health care nearly half a billion dollars a year would flow into some of the most economically-depressed neighborhoods in the country, where most security officers live.
“We need these security jobs to be good jobs for our communities,” said Pastor Raymond E. Lankford, Executive Director, Healthy Communities, Inc. “Hard-working security officers shouldn’t have to work two, sometimes three jobs and still scrape by. It’s a disgrace and we won’t stand for it to continue.” Pastor Lankford is a member of the Stand for Security Coalition, a statewide group of clergy, congregations, community and elected leaders united to support private security officers lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
“Our hard working security officers’ deserve wages and benefits that keep pace with other service workers in commercial real estate—janitors, window washers, parking attendants and operating engineers,” said State Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). “By transforming thousands of security jobs throughout the city into good jobs for working families, we can create a more stable and reliable workforce that translates into better public safety for everyone.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously declared Thursday “Security Officer Appreciation Day” in the city.
The raucous march and rally came as contract negotiations began for nearly 4,000 San Francisco Bay Area private security officers. The march disrupted traffic along Market Street during rush-hour traffic, indicating officers are prepared to intensify their demonstrations just as workers seeking good jobs with health care have done time and again in the successful Justice for Janitors campaigns through the United States. The national SEIU Stand for Security campaign is modeled after SEIU Justice for Janitors campaign as a proven method for improving lives and jobs of low-wage service workers within the wealthy corporate real estate industry.
“There’s not a reason in the world why security officers should earn less than union janitors in the same buildings owned by the same big banking, finance and commercial real estate institutions,” said Mike Garcia, Vice President of SEIU.