January 1, 2023

Union Janitors Protest Twitter Boss

Janitors represented by Service Employees International Union Local 87 rallied at San Francisco City Hall with Mayor London Breed and other elected officials December 15 to protest being fired illegally from their jobs at Twitter.

Mayor Breed called on billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk to rehire the 48 janitors he fired earlier in December. “They deserve more than being put out in the way that they were.” Breed said, noting that San Francisco gave tax breaks to Twitter to locate its headquarters in the city. She urged Musk to “respect the people who helped make your company what it is,” and to “be compassionate, to be understanding and to work with this community that has showed up for this company day in and day out … because they deserve more than being put out in the way that they were.”

Musk fired the janitors when he cancelled Twitter’s contract with the janitorial company Flagship, with little advance notice or severance pay. SEIU Local 87 filed unfair labor practice charges against Twitter and the new, nonunion contractor, Cabalen MB Food Group, that Musk brought in to replace Flagship’s union workforce. The union also announced it would sue Twitter for violating state labor laws and San Francisco’s law that stipulates that new security or janitorial services agreements must include hiring back the existing workers for 90 days after switching contractors.

After the rally at City Hall, the janitors marched to Twitter’s headquarters and placed plungers and mops marked with #justiceforjanitors in front of the building. Many said they were dismayed by the timing of the firings.

SEIU Local president Olga Miranda said, “Our cleaning contractor at Twitter was told by Twitter that they are cutting the contract. So, we have about 48 families out of work. And it just so happens that it’s three weeks before Christmas.”

“Overnight we don’t have anything,” said Adrianna Villarreal, a union janitor who worked cleaning the Twitter offices for five years. “How am I going to eat? How am I going to take care of my family? This is what happens when these billionaire companies don’t respect union work. It’s terrible.”

“With less than two weeks before Christmas, we’re trying to figure out what’s the outlook for us as far as being able to put food on the table and what our Christmas is going to look like in comparison to his Christmas,” said janitor Carolina Ayala.

Julio Alvarado, a union janitor who cleaned Twitter for 10 years, said, “I won’t have any healthcare. I won’t have money to pay the rent. We don’t know what we are going to do. These tech companies have everything. They need to do the right thing and put the people who keep them safe back on the job.”

While some of the janitors earn just above the minimum wage, Musk was able to use his position as one of the wealthiest people on the planet to purchase Twitter for $44 billion in October and become sole owner. Musk then fired Twitter’s board of directors and top executives and laid off 3,700 employees—including staffers who monitor and moderate content for hate speech and disinformation.

Musk, a notorious anti-union CEO who fought against the unionization of the workforce at Tesla, issued an ultimatum to the remaining employees that they had to commit to an “extremely hardcore” working environment. Many quit in protest. The billionaire, who inherited wealth from his family’s mining operations in apartheid South Africa, used his platform to attack Dr. Anthony Fauci, offered to reinstate former President Donald Trump despite Trump’s attempted coup in January 2021, and suspended the accounts of journalists who were critical of Musk.

As many Twitter users left the platform for other sites, some activists called for a boycott of Twitter. In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, retired Teamster Art Persyko asked, “Why should we financially support a company that so poorly manages a major part of our digital town square by allowing hate speech and prioritizing its bottom line over its workers, workers’ rights and the public interest?” Persyko called for better regulation of Twitter and development of “public, nonprofit alternatives to Twitter and any social media entity that is unfair to its workers and profits from allowing and amplifying its worst customers’ hate speech.”

Twitter is also the subject of complaints filed with the NLRB for “terminating an employee in retaliation for an unsuccessful effort with other workers to organize a strike” and placing employees on administrative leave “in retaliation for participating in a lawsuit and for suggesting to coworkers that they protest the company’s return-to-office policy.”