PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

SEIU continues efforts for Carnegie Mellon janitors
by Abie Friday, Mar. 24, 2006 at 5:46 PM

The Service Employees International Union continued to work for janitors outside of a building on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. The building is the Collaborative Innovation Center, and the janitors in the building earn around 7 dollars and 50 cents per hour, with no health care and no sick days.

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The Service Employees International Union were asked again to leave the sidewalk outside of a new building recently erected on the Carnegie Mellon University campus today. The building is called the Collaborative Innovation Center, or CIC, and the janitors in the building earn around 7 dollars and 50 cents per hour, with no health care and no sick days.

Janitors at the other buildings at CMU are members of SEIU, and have organized for many years to get wages that are almost twice the CIC wage, plus heath care and pension benefits. The union considers the new building a threat to other janitors on campus and around the city.

The CIC building is on the CMU campus and provides office space for tech companies like Intel and Apple Computer. The building is owned by the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, or RIDC, which built the building using 8 million dollars in grant money from the state, as well as tax increment financing. SEIU said that if the RIDC is supposed to be fostering economic development in the region, using public funds, then they should be creating well paying jobs, instead of under-cutting the wages of local janitors.

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by Abie Friday, Mar. 24, 2006 at 5:46 PM

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Robyn Gray of SEIU
by Abie Friday, Mar. 24, 2006 at 5:46 PM

audio link: MP3 at 801.3 kibibytes

From last week / originally aired on Rustbelt Radio, March 20th, 2006 (radio.indypgh.org)