This week, downtown Minneapolis is at the center of an effort to improve conditions for lower-income property services workers, many of whom clean the city’s tallest office buildings and watch over its biggest residential buildings.

Service Employees International Union Local 26 launched a three-day unfair labor practices strike early Monday morning outside of Ameriprise’s headquarters at 7th Street and 2nd Avenue after months of negotiations with subcontractors. Around 4,000 commercial janitors from across the Twin Cities are taking part in the union’s call for higher wages and retirement benefits.

According to SEIU Local 26, the majority of its unionized commercial janitors are immigrants and people of color who make less than $19 an hour on average without an employer-paid pension. Inflation has increased 17% since the union last bargained for new contracts before the pandemic, leaders said.

George Mullins, a union steward who works as a janitor cleaning Target headquarters, told MPR News that pension is “a big deal” for workers like him.

“I’ve been with the company for over 25 years, and I’m soon to retire, and what do I have? Nothing. With the inflation and everything, we’re just trying to keep up,” he said from the picket line.

Hundreds of the striking workers marched over to the Public Service Building on Monday afternoon for a City Council listening session about a forthcoming labor standards board ordinance. The meeting was convened by the ordinance’s authors, City Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai (Ward 10) and Councilmembers Aurin Chowdhury (Ward 12) and Katie Cashman (Ward 7).

If the ordinance passes, the City would establish a labor standards board, which would set industry-specific standards for working conditions and address workers’ grievances, including wage disputes.

Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and Councilmembers Jason Chavez (Ward 9) and Emily Koski (Ward 11) were also present for the listening session.

“We know that the right to bargain is one of the most powerful tools for protecting workers. We also know that not every worker in our city has that right to bargain,” Payne told the audience. “The purpose of today's listening session is to hear from workers around how we can better support workers as a City and provide, through this labor standards board, some of that opportunity to have the voices of workers uplifted in their workplaces and how workers and employers and other stakeholders can come together to make our city a more equitable place where individuals and families can thrive.”

About two dozen people, including some SEIU Local 26 members, spoke during the listening session, shared their experiences and expressed their support for a labor standards board.

There was also representation from the nonunion worker’s rights and advocacy group Centro de Trabajadores Unidas en la Lucha, or CTUL, and condo maintenance workers who are employed by property management company FirstService Residential and seeking to unionize.

Jaqueline Flores testified that she was wrongfully fired from a fast food restaurant in Minneapolis after giving birth. “They didn’t give an explanation, they just gave me a piece of paper and said I was terminated,” she said.

Another woman named Estella testified that she also was fired without a reason when she was pregnant. “At that time, I didn't know that I had rights and I had another way of doing things, and now that I know, I want to make sure that no other worker goes through a situation like that,” she said through a translator.

An overnight building attendant who’s employed by FirstService Residential, Michael Rupke, presented to City Council a petition with 150 signatures from Minneapolis property workers, including 40 of his coworkers, several of whom also spoke during the listening session.

“There's a lot of problems with this company, and it's difficult to talk to a company that doesn't want to listen to you,” he said. “They dismiss us and shoo us away. That's why today we're on an unfair labor practices strike.”

Rupke said a labor standards board would help the working class in general by giving a voice to “people that the powerful don't want to listen to because it irritates them and affects their pocketbooks.”

Another FirstService Residential employee, Ramala Shelton, has worked security in downtown Minneapolis buildings for decades. His current post is in a Nicollet Mall highrise.

“I have a lot of history with downtown and the neighborhood. I know a lot of the people and businesses here. The way FirstService operates their business is not conducive to what downtown represents at all,” Shelton said during the listening session. “I have not worked at a place with more turnover than FirstService. We needed a labor standards board, hands down.”

To end the first day of the strike on Monday, members and supporters of SEIU Local 26 rallied again at Ameriprise headquarters, and then took to the streets of downtown Minneapolis with other striking workers across the metro.

On Tuesday morning, hundreds of commercial janitors returned to the picket line outside of downtown Minneapolis office buildings, before they head to St. Paul for a joint rally with nursing home workers at the state capitol in the afternoon.

SEIU Local 26 approved the unfair labor practices strike on behalf of its more than 8,000 property services workers whose contracts expired, including janitors, security officers and window cleaners, across the Twin Cities in early February. 

Since then, the union was able to agree on new contracts for about half of its members, including about 2,500 office security guards and retail janitors who work at Target, Best Buy and other big-box stores.

But the union wasn’t able to do the same for commercial janitors over the weekend after months of negotiations with cleaning companies.

Earlier this year, SEIU Local 26 released a report titled Building an Inclusive Recovery for Downtown Minneapolis, which emphasizes the importance of including property services workers such as janitors in downtown revitalization initiatives.

Bargaining for the workers who haven’t yet reached an agreement is scheduled to resume on Friday.