Published: December 21, 2009

WILMINGTON -- Willie Grant has been a janitor in the city's downtown office buildings for more than two decades.

He has lived that whole time in the city's Hilltop section, a poor West Side community that has been struggling for at least as long as he has.

After years at the bargaining table, the 58-year-old is now a union member. The slightly higher wages he will receive won't allow him to move to a better neighborhood, nor will they allow him to become a customer of the furriers and jewelers who have stores near the high-rises he cleans each day.

But the union card Grant will have in his wallet as of Jan. 1 has him feeling like he's on top of the world.

"I'll only be making $8 an hour, so I'm struggling now and I'll be struggling then," he said. "But this first contract is a good step. The medical benefits will help me a lot. And I have to be honest. A lot of this has been about respect more than anything else."

Grant suffers from a heart condition and is struggling to raise 8-year-old twins. He is one of about 800 office cleaners in Wilmington and its immediate suburbs who are now unionized. The contracts are part of a national effort by unions to give meaning to the Employee Free Choice Act, a federal law that gives workers a free choice and fair chance to unionize if they so choose, Delaware AFL-CIO Executive Director Gerald L. Brady said.

Outside organizers played a much bigger role in the successful negotiation of the contract with seven area cleaning companies, which represent more than 70 percent of the janitorial workers in the Wilmington-area office market.

"It's one of the more masterful and better executed national organizing campaigns I've ever seen," Brady said. "It's actually one of the first real large-scale organizing efforts in Delaware and I suspect workers for some large, well-known, non-union retail companies will be next."

To get the deal done, several protests in front of local banks such as Wilmington Trust and JPMorgan Chase were held this year to call attention to the work being done at the bargaining table.

The companies that signed the contract include ABM Janitorial Services, Shellville Services, Arthur Jackson Co., Shamrock Building Services, Bravo Building Services, ISS and CSI International. Those companies, in turn, get contracts to clean the offices of corporate giants such as Bank of America.

The SEIU Local 32BJ filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in March against Wilmington Trust contractor Optima Cleaning Systems, claiming the company had engaged in a "campaign of intimidation and surveillance" that included photographing and videotaping union activity on public property and following union organizers who visited employees at their homes. The complaint was later settled when Optima agreed to pay more than $24,000 in back wages to seven cleaners at the Wilmington Trust building.

The two-year contract goes into effect in January for workers in Wilmington and in January 2011 for workers in New Castle County. Under the contract, office cleaners will earn a minimum wage of $8 per hour or receive a raise of at least 40 cents per hour, according to the union. The union said average hourly wages will increase as much as $2 over the life of the contract.

Kurt Westby, a regional leader of the 32BJ Union, said getting the contract is particularly gratifying because all the members were minimum-wage workers with little or no benefits, truly a segment of America's working poor. With more than 110,000 members in eight states and Washington, the union bills itself as the largest property service union in the country.

"This contract gives these workers the chance to escape the cycle of poverty in the long run," Westby said. "They get raises, medical plans and a procedure to address grievances that didn't exist before."

Westby noted that many of the janitors are cleaning the windows and floors at marbled-floor headquarters of companies that are receiving seven-figures worth of federal stimulus money to bail them out of cash-flow problems.

"There is an incredible contradiction going on there when it comes to how these workers get paid," Westby said. "It's really a story of rich and poor."

Mark Brunswick, a lobbyist who has helped organize janitorial unions in the past, said contracts tend to stabilize an otherwise transient work force.

"Simply getting health care and a few paid holidays, sick and vacation days is huge for these folks," he said. "It also promotes a feeling of, 'Hey, now I matter a little bit.'"

Fred Wilson, 60, has it better than most of his fellow members.

His wife of 25 years works for the state, so he has been able to receive medical benefits through her policy.

Mostly, he said, he served on the union's bargaining committee to fight for self-respect and the rights of his younger colleagues.

"I'm in my golden years, heading toward retirement," he said. "But we haven't seen a raise in four years, which really hurts the younger workers. Now, if a loved one dies, they can actually get a paid bereavement day to grieve and pay their respects."

After more than 9 months of fighting, 800 janitors who keep Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase offices' clean in Delaware have won wage increases, health insurance, paid vacation and other benefits. The historic area-wide contract was negotiated with at least seven cleaning companies and applies to three-quarters of the commercial office buildings in Wilmington and New Castle County.