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The draft ordinance, written by Jobs With Justice, mandates that businesses with cleaning, clerical and food-service contracts with the city provide health benefits to their workers and pay a starting wage of 110 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of four. That works out to $8 an hour and $16,645 a year. Although the ordinance names only the city, living wage advocates want the county to adopt it as well. The activists plan to pitch the idea to city and county officials at a community meeting this week. To the discomfort of county commissioners, the meeting is likely to throw the spotlight on a previous wage-hike program initiated by the county four years ago. While county officials say that project has been a major success, advocates of the proposed ordinance say the county's project has been a failure--and they plan to introduce immigrant workers like Roberto at the meeting to prove it. Roberto, who asked that his real name not be used, is a contract janitor for the county. He says he makes as little as $5.60 an hour, 40 cents below the state minimum wage, and receives no health benefits. He calls his salary "sueldo de hambre"--wages of hunger. County officials, however, say Roberto is an exception. The Living Wage and Benefit Project--initiated by Multnomah County in 1994 to raise wages and give low-income workers access to health benefits--established a point system that county officials used to evaluate potential custodial contractors. The plan replaced the previous practice of awarding the job to the lowest bidder--a system that took its toll on workers, who bore the brunt of cost-cutting contractors. Now, the county judges janitorial contract bids in four areas: employee wages and benefits, cost to the county, experience of the company and cleaning technique. Robert Kieta, Multnomah County's custodial and contract manager, says the project has raised wages and provided health benefits for cleaning workers. Kieta says that at the time the project was initiated, cleaning crew employees had no benefits and earned between $4.50 and $6 an hour. (Oregon's minimum wage was $4.50 when the county started the project.) Now, Kieta says, 60 out of 80 total county custodial employees have health benefits. He also says--according to the payrolls submitted by the participating contractors--the average current wage of the county's contract janitors is $7.47 an hour. Union organizers at Service Employees International Union Local 49 (key sponsors of the new draft ordinance) concede that janitorial workers have been helped. They're frustrated, however, because they think the county project is moving too slowly. "They identified a problem three years ago," says SEIU organizer Steven Ward, "and there's still a big problem." The county, for example, uses 10 janitorial contractors, and only six of them have gone through the new criteria process. That means four contractors--who employ a quarter of the county's 80 contract custodians--are not monitored at all. SEIU organizers say they have found janitors working for the county who earn far less than $7.47 an hour, sometimes making less than the minimum wage. "If Kieta believes that the average wage is around $7.50 an hour, then I don't think he has all the information," says Ward. "There's a problem with his monitoring and enforcement." SEIU organizers, in fact, have done some monitoring of their own, sneaking into county buildings after hours to talk with cleaning crews about wages and benefits. Organizers say they have made contact with at least 15 of the county's 80 custodial staffers, and the stories they've heard from these workers cast doubt on Kieta's rosy numbers. Roberto, for example, has worked for custodial contractor Oregon Pacific Corporation, mopping, vacuuming and scrubbing toilets in city and county buildings for 10 months. Speaking through an interpreter, the 33-year-old Mexican immigrant says he earns $56 for an eight-hour shift. He says, however, that his duties have increased to the point where he now often works 10 hours a day without any additional pay. Still wearing his Oregon Pacific work shirt from the night before, which sports the slogan "We're #1," he says he has never heard of the county's Living Wage and Benefit Project. That may be because Oregon Pacific, which employs roughly 5 percent of the county's custodians, is one of the four contractors that don't participate in the project. County Commissioner Bev Stein says contractors such as Oregon Pacific are not part of the county's living wage program because their employees also clean city buildings; only companies that contract exclusively with Multnomah County were part of Living Wage and Benefits Project. "This worker doesn't have any benefits because he's not part of the program," Stein says. For critics, however, that's exactly the problem with the 3-year-old program. "It's still in pilot-project mode," says SEIU's Ward. Roberto, in the meantime, continues to work five nights a week cleaning county and city buildings. He lives in a two-bedroom apartment off Northeast Sandy Boulevard with four other Mexican immigrants, sharing a room with his wife and child while two other adults sleep on couches in the main room. Ironically, his lack of health benefits has forced his family to use free county services like La Clinica de Buena Salud in Northeast Portland, taxing the county for its inability to make his employer provide coverage. "What a joke," he says. Asked what he'll do with the extra money if the $8-an-hour living wage ordinance is enacted, he says he'll save it. "You have to worry about saving," he says. "Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow." |
