Longtime employees and Guild activists Tom Conrad, left, and Derrick Bell.
Back in May, with barely six months left on Guild agreements at the Detroit News and Free Press, Gannett announced that it was terminating the maintenance unit’s contract and outsourcing the janitorial work.
Some of the 28 employees had cleaned up Gannett’s properties for decades. They were told they were welcome to apply for new jobs with ABM, assured that nothing would really change. Wages. Benefits. Vacation. No worries.
Of course, there’d be no union contract to back that up — cue a Mr. Burns-style cackle.
But the workers are having the last laugh, or at least the latest one. In November, after collecting union cards from 90 percent of the old and new ABM employees in the unit, they voted 18-1 to rejoin the Guild.
ABM made it an easy decision, said Richard Hyde, a 40-year employee and member of the Detroit Guild’s Executive Board.
“Management told us one thing when they first came in, that nothing would change, and then they hired us and my wage dropped from $14.39 an hour down to $10,” Hyde said.
His bosses even refused to give him long-scheduled vacation days for a family reunion in August, and Hyde said they’ve told people who have doctors’ appointments during work hours, “don’t bother coming back, you won’t have a job.”
Hyde works at the printing plant; downtown at the newspaper headquarters 30-year employee and unit chair Tom Conrad said management hasn’t played that kind of hardball with vacation and sick time.
But both worksites share the biggest problems — dramatically reduced wages and health care benefits so expensive that no one can afford them.
“It’s outrageous,” Hyde said. “Some of the younger people are making only $8.50 an hour and it would run them $700 a month for their families’ health insurance.”
Both Conrad and Hyde are on the bargaining team, which was scheduled to hold its first meeting with ABM as The Guild Reporter was going to press.
Meanwhile, the Guild has arbitration pending with Gannett over the maintenance unit’s outsourcing.
“We’ve had a subcontracting clause in the janitorial contract since November of 2000,” Detroit Guild President Lou Mleczko said. “We took the language to mean that they could subcontract some janitorial work as needed, but not that they could wipe out the bargaining unit.”
How hard the Guild pushes for resolution with Gannett depends on how good — or bad — an offer they get from ABM, Mleczko said, explaining that it’s in Gannett’s best interest that negotiations go well.
“What Gannett did here is part of a plan to turn over all their janitorial work at all their plants to ABM,” he said. “We think Gannett has considerable influence with ABM.
Mleczko noted that the maintenance unit at the Detroit papers has a proud history.
It began on one of America’s most infamous days, Dec. 7, 1941. Distanced by thousands of miles and many hours from Pearl Harbor, the janitors voted overwhelming to join the Guild. The same day, the news department and the business office, in separate elections, voted “no.” Years later, they changed their minds.
“The janitors might not have been as formally educated, but they were a lot smarter,” Mleczko said. “They knew this was a good benefit for them.”