On Thursday, May 15th, SEIU Local 1 rallied outside of city hall ahead of receiving a resolution “urging regional, civic and business leaders to commit to paying working people, including janitors, a fair wage and benefits for their work with the goal being to enable working people to lift their families out of poverty, strengthen our communities and facilitate equitable, inclusive growth across racial and geographic divides.”
SEIU Local 1 represents a wide range of workers across the Missouri side of the metro, including janitors who service office buildings throughout Kansas City and Jackson County. This resolution, which was then formally introduced at Kansas City’s City Council meeting that afternoon, is being introduced as contracts affecting around 800 janitors who clean more than 150 buildings are set to expire on June 30, 2025.
Kansas City, MO Councilman Kevin O’Neill introduced the ordinance honoring the essential role of these workers and highlighting some of the unique issues facing them. Councilman O’Neill has been one of the most preeminent faces of organized labor for more than three decades in the region. Kevin is honored on the bottom of page three of each page of The Labor Beacon as our Editor Emeritus.
The ordinance highlights a number of key issues facing these essential workers, many of whom are finding it hard to make ends meet. SEIU Local 1 says that some are having to work two, or even three, jobs. The poverty rate in Kansas City is 15 percent, whereas the national poverty rate is only 11 percent, and housing and rental costs have risen between 38 and 47 percent since just 2020. This has placed enormous pressure on these hard workers.
Kansas City has been one of the most economically and racially segregated regions in the nation. Compared to white residents, Black residents in the region are three times more likely and Hispanic residents are two times more likely to live in poverty. Most of SEIU Local 1’s janitorial membership in Kansas City is comprised of black and brown workers.
“It is time for the janitorial contractors profiting off the backs of working people to create sustainable jobs that support a strong working class,” said SEIU Local 1 in a press release.
SEIU Local 1 represents over 50,000 working people in Chicago, Illinois and surrounding suburbs; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan and surrounding cities; Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri; and Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo, Ohio. Local 1, which is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, has their local office at 45th and Paseo and has increased investment in local worker organizing since the pandemic.
The resolution reads:
“BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF KANSAS CITY: That the Mayor and Council hereby support the SEIU Local 1’s appeal to the owners of buildings in the City of Kansas City to ensure that the janitors who work in their buildings to make them clean and safe, are paid a fair wage and receive access to meaningful retirement benefits; and
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this Resolution be spread upon the Minutes of the Council in testimony thereof and that a copy hereof be presented to SEIU Local 1 with the Mayor and Council urging regional, civic and business leaders to commit to paying working people, including janitors, a fair wage and benefits for their work with the goal being to enable working people to lift their families out of poverty, strengthen our communities and facilitate equitable, inclusive growth across racial and geographic divides.”
Tristin Amezcua-Hogan is the Editor of The Labor Beacon and a member of LIUNA Local 264. Tristin also serves as the Director of Communications for the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and the Chair of the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance.
Tristin grew up as the son of a UA Local 669 member in Tecumseh, KS and the great-nephew of George C. Amis, longtime leader of the United Rubberworkers (now USW Local 307) in Kansas. Growing up in rural Kansas as the child of teen parents, Tristin quickly came to appreciate the life-changing benefit of a union job.
Tristin and his partner, Rebeca Amezcua-Hogan, are residents of the Westside, Kansas City, MO's historic Mexican neighborhood. They are proud members of Kansas City's New Reform Temple.
