Just 10 days before their old contract was to expire, Hartford area janitorial workers who belong to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union have a new contract.
 
The old contract expires on Dec. 31.

According to Kurt Westby, the union's Connecticut director, the new four-year contract provides 17 percent wage hikes over four-years for workers in downtown Hartford and nearly 20 percent in wage hikes for union members who work in the suburbs, where wages traditionally have been lower.

The contract covers workers who clean more than 90 percent of large commercial office space in downtown Hartford and office parks and buildings in other parts of Hartford County. Among the suburban buildings cleaned by union members are Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford and Hamilton Sundstrand in Windsor Locks.

Pratt and Hamilton are subsidiaries of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp. Union members also clean UTC's headquarters in downtown Hartford's Gold Building.

"This new contract will provide Hartford's office cleaners the opportunity to live the American Dream," Westby said. "More office cleaners will be able to take their kids to the doctor and have retirement security," he said.

"Fully employer-paid family health care coverage will be maintained for all full-time workers, and part-time workers have an improved health benefit, which will include life insurance, a prescription drug benefit, and dental and optical insurance," Westby said.

Also under the new contract, suburban office cleaners won a pension benefit for the first time and gained two personal days, he said. Employers also agreed to an improved training program, which includes industry-skills classes as well as English as a second language courses, and also to a legal services benefit program, according to Westby.

"Cleaners also won significant gains in expanding the number of full-time jobs and increasing the minimum number of hours for part-time workers over the course of the contract," he said.

By the end of the contract, all cleaners working at buildings with more than 400,000 square feet of space will have full-time jobs, which will also provide fully employer-paid family health coverage, Westby said. Part-time workers will receive increased hours to a minimum of 25 a week, up from a current minimum of 20 hours a week, he said.

With some 100,000 members in six states and Washington, DC, including more than 4,500 in Connecticut, Local 32BJ bills itself as the largest property services union in the country.