Contract negotiations between tens of thousands of unionized building service workers and their employers started with a bang on Thursday as hundreds of cleaners, porters, and handypersons rallied in downtown Manhattan.
The workers are members of SEIU local 32BJ, which represents about 80,000 building service workers throughout New York City, including 20,000 commercial building workers. At least 3,300 union members live in Brooklyn.
Negotiations between 32BJ and the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations Inc. — an organization which represents the city’s major commercial building owners, managers and cleaning contractors — began with union representatives advocating for wage increases and the protection of health insurance for workers.
The current four year contract with between the board and 32BJ is set to expire Dec. 31, which the union says will put the livelihood and health of the workers at risk if they are unable to negotiate new wages that reflect the skyrocketing cost of living in the city.
“The contract covers 20,000 cleaners that are in office buildings, higher [education], workers who clean Rockefeller Center, Hudson Yards, Empire State Building, Port Authority, Central Station, World Trade Center, NYU, MoMA — the vast majority of offices and institutional facilities across the city,” 32BJ president Manny Pastreich told Brooklyn Paper.
Preparing for the difficult bargaining period, Pastreich acknowledged that after the COVID-19 pandemic, many commercial building owners are struggling to keep their buildings occupied with the shift to remote working and the cost of rent and upkeep of office buildings. Earlier this year, office vacancy rates in Manhattan reached historic highs. In Brooklyn, the number of commercial leases plummeted, with office vacancy rates at 21%.
Of the 20,000 32BJ commercial building members, more than 7,000 were laid off during the pandemic. The layoffs, coupled with the rise of inflation, has…
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