*UPDATED With Comment from Cisco, union president Mike Garcia
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Janitors at a slew of major Silicon Valley corporations -- including Cisco, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Oracle -- are set to walk off the job this week.
While it sounds like a potential disaster for Cubicle Land, the associations that hire the janitors have reportedly already called in replacement workers. Still, the strike is likely to grow, and according to union president Mike Garcia, it has the potential to be the largest janitor strike in Northern California.
"The way it's going, we're going to extend the strike into more areas -- we'll be expanding the strike to Stanford University, downtown Oakland and the East Bay area tomorrow -- and we can grow it so it's a full strike across Northern California," Garcia says.
An estimated 400 janitors walked off the job today (including 100 at Cisco and 25 at Yahoo), and the janitors are also expected to demonstrate in front of the Computer History Museum for Intel's annual shareholder meeting tomorrow.
At issue, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is a new union contract (the Service Employees International Union Local 1877) that would increase pay for janitors by $1.60 an hour over four years. It's a modest bump compared to the $2.25 per hour increase recently agreed to by Los Angeles janitors.
SEIU local represents close to 6,000 workers in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties, while the janitors in San Francisco negotiate contracts separately.
We contacted Apple, Cisco and Oracle for a comment. Although we haven't heard back from Apple or Oracle, Cisco came back with an official response:
"A group of union workers from local 1877 are staging picketing activities in Silicon Valley today. These demonstrations are taking place at various locations, including Cisco and other company campuses, across the South Bay. Cisco has been working closely with union officials to ensure that any demonstrations are conducted lawfully and we do not expect any interruptions to our day-to-day operations. Current contract negotiations between the service provider and its employees expired last Saturday and we are hopeful the parties can reach an agreement in the near future."
Photo: Flickr/thp365
