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Published: April 24, 2008

NEW ROCHELLE, NY -- Nearly four hundred cleaners working at East Coast malls owned by Simon Property Group, North America’s largest publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), will soon be bringing home better wages and benefits. Under a new agreement between Local 32BJ and Control Building Services, which employs cleaners at most of Simon’s East Coast malls, the wages and benefits of cleaners at 17 malls will be raised to match those of area office building cleaners five states.

Hudson Valley cleaners working at The Westchester Mall in White Plains, the Jefferson Valley Mall in Yorktown and the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet are covered under the new agreement.

“Bringing the wages for cleaners at Simon malls into line with office building cleaners will enable hundreds of workers to climb out of poverty,” said Shirley Aldebol, Local 32BJ Hudson Valley Director. “All workers deserve the wages needed to support themselves and families.”

Simon Property Group is the largest publicly traded real estate company in the United States with over $3 billion in annual revenues and ownership interest in 380 properties around the world.  Control Service Group, a private New Jersey-based company which provides cleaning and maintenance services to commercial and retail properties across the country, is a $300 million company that employs more than 8,000 people.

Under the terms of the new contract, cleaners at Simon Malls in the Hudson Valley will begin earning $11.00 an hour on May 1, 2008. For some of the workers, who are earning the New York minimum wage, the May 1 raise will be as much as $3.85 an hour. Fully employer paid family health care for full-time workers and a health benefit which includes life insurance, a prescription drug benefit and dental and optical insurance for part-time workers will go into effect on October 1, 2008.

“Until a solution is found for our national health care crisis, employer paid health care coverage is the only option for low wage workers,” said Héctor Figueroa, Local 32BJ Secretary-Treasurer. “Workers, their families and communities across the East Coast will benefit from this responsible way to cope with our national health care crisis.”

The agreement with Control Service Group phases in on May 1 at most of the 17 Simon- owned malls in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, including Pentagon City Fashion Centre in Arlington, Virginia and Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City, New Jersey. Wage provisions for mall cleaners on Long Island will begin on July 1, 2008.

With more than 100,000 members in six states and Washington, DC, including 4,500 in the Hudson Valley, Local 32BJ is the largest property services union in the country.