Service and Food Workers Union:

The annual rallies around International Justice for Cleaners Day grew out of an ugly incident on June 15, 1990, in Los Angeles when police beat immigrant cleaners protesting the way a multi-national cleaning company was treating them in a CBD office block.

This incident provoked public outrage in the USA and abroad. Pressure from cleaners who belonged to unions in other countries helped force the contract cleaner to finally sit down, negotiate and show some respect and decency when talking with their workers.

Since then - for nearly two decades now - June 15 has become a focal point for organising cleaners in campaigns and celebrations across several continents.
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"We are the people, who clean this city’s buildings, And we are sick of being ignored!"

Those who clean Auckland and Wellington’s Buildings every night get paid as little as $10.95 an hour. This is not enough to support our families.

The building owners are some of the biggest property owners in Australia and New Zealand and the Service & Food Workers Union who represents those cleaners have asked building owners to adopt the Clean Start principles to introduce a fair deal for cleaners into the property industry.

Cleaners already suffer below poverty level incomes. Our work rates have been rising for the last ten years and we often clean three times the floor area cleaned by American Workers. As cleaners we just can’t earn enough to live and don’t have time to do a decent job.

Its time for Building Owners to adopt the Clean Start principles and introduce a fair deal to the property industry.

"I am worried that all my company wants from me is to work harder and faster by cutting our hours. I do not think they understand what I do and they do not appreciate us.

"All I can say is please pay me a decent wage so that I can get my family off being reliant on the benefits.

"I do any cleaning job; buffing, mopping, dusting etc…

"I do not want my children to grow up living a life dependent on others."

This is Rosa Faleniko from Wellington, New Zealand. She has worked as a cleaner for over six years since 1996, with maternity leave in the middle. When she started, she worked 44 hours a week, but she has had a reduction of hours to 28 hours per week. Rosa will soon be paid $10.95 per hour, compared with $10.15 an hour in 1996 when she started – that’s only an $0.80 increase over 10 years.

Rosa works to support her seven children and her husband who is unable to work full-time due to sickness. She has to rely on a Government family assistance package just to cover the costs of living and fears that her children will grow up thinking it is OK to live a life dependent on others or the state. She also cannot afford day care for her 18 month old baby and worries about what her teenager will get up to if she and her husband are working evenings. Rosa likes working with the other cleaners but she says that managers only turn up to ‘give us more work’.