You may have already heard about Zoila Sosa, who fasted for 72 hours outside the glitzy L.A. address of 2000 Avenue of the Stars, in protest of losing her job as a janitor for JPMorgan Chase. It was an emotional week for Zoila, who was depending on her wages to take care of her elderly mother and send her son to college. But JPMorgan Chase claims they have nothing to do with Zoila's job or the 15 other janitors thrown out on the street.
The janitors who were let go from their jobs at JPMorgan's Century City Towers are hardworking Americans, already struggling in a tough economy. They were fired simply because their employer is looking to cut corners and stack extra work onto the remaining employees. Fifty-seven of those remaining workers walked out in protest, and were subsequently suspended.
JPMorgan Chase has argued that the firing of janitorial staff has nothing to do with their company, saying, "The dispute is between a vendor and employees, not Chase." The janitors were hired, and fired, by ABM Industries, one of the many contractors that companies hire to provide services in their facilities.
But the buildings these janitors clean aren't owned by ABM; they're owned by JPMorgan. The floors these janitors vacuum have the imprints of JPMorgan executives' expensive leather shoes. And JPMorgan's ignorance of the issue just further shows how little one of America's largest banking and investment companies actually cares about the average American worker.
L.A. Times Columnist Tim Rutten wrote in a recent column,
"It's hard not to be struck by the contrast between that lack of empathetic generosity and the courageous solidarity shown by their 57 fellow janitors who risked their own jobs in an economy with rampant unemployment. These people make $13.50 an hour; the tenants in that building have blazers on which every button costs three times that."
The 500 protestors and 13 arrested community activists who joined the janitors in Los Angeles show you just how great the divide has grown between the Wall Street wealthy and the rest of us. While JPMorgan Chase has paid out $9 billion in executive bonuses and received $95 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts, more and more of those same taxpayers are finding themselves unemployed, struggling to pay their bills, and worrying about whether they'll lose their homes. And ABM, the contractor, isn't exactly struggling - in 2009 the company had an annual revenue of $3.5 billion.
A single executive's salary at JPMorgan could most likely pay for an entire parade of janitorial workers at Century City Towers. Even the roof would be spotless. But they're not asking for big bonuses or more staff - they're simply asking for their jobs back.
"It's unjust the way they earn so much money. What I earn in one year they earn in five hours," said Rosa Mirna Cruz, who works at 2000 Avenue of the Stars. "How is that fair and how is that good for our country? They are leaving us and our families without food and without a way to pay for rent, and they are taking jobs away from our city. They get billions and we struggle to survive. All we are asking is that they stop unfairly laying off workers."
In his column, Rutten adds,
"These janitors ask nothing more of us than to support their families by doing the backbreaking job of cleaning up after some of the wealthiest and most privileged people in America. In return for their labor, they have been thrown out on the street, like the refuse their putative employer profits by collecting."
And so the janitors at 2000 Avenue of the Stars will keep fighting, as will service workers across the country, to prove that losing their jobs isn't just a happenstance of a recession when their employer isn't struggling.
This week janitors will protest in New York City, where JPMorgan is spending more of their money to sponsor the U.S. Open. I wonder how many hourly wages a single VIP ticket to the U.S. Open would pay for...
Read Tim Rutten's quoted column on the L.A. workers' plight in its entirety here.
You can add your own voice by writing to the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jaime Dimon. Click here to learn more.
