Image: Supporters of the Justice for Janitors campaign hold signs that read, “L.A. Should Work for Everyone.” Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection, UCLA Library Special Collections.
Community organizers have used power research to advance their campaigns throughout the history of U.S. social movements. From the civil rights movement to anti-war protests, research played a critical role in developing strategies, building momentum, and securing transformative wins.
This also includes the labor movement that has historically understood the power and potential of strategic research. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Service Employees International Union launched Justice for Janitors (J4J) which employed a sophisticated and highly effective approach to strategic research. In many ways, this shaped how strategic corporate research is employed to this day.
J4J’s strategic corporate research employed a mix of industry mapping, designed to understand the market in each geography, and power structure analysis, aimed at identifying key players and sources of leverage. The innovative J4J campaigns secured vital protections for people in janitorial services and offer valuable insights for strategic researchers and organizers today.
The Rise of of Justice for Janitors
The commercial real estate industry changed rapidly in the 1980s in ways that significantly eroded union power. Many janitors were covered by union contracts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, by the mid-1980’s commercial real estate owners and their property managers increasingly contracted out cleaning services to non-unionized janitorial companies, all to cut costs and maximize profits.
During this time, unions in places like Los Angeles lost 75% of their membership. This new workforce was largely made up of immigrant women and men, many undocumented, working for contractors rather than the building owners directly. Contractors slashed wages of this more easily exploitable workforce. While a typical janitor’s hourly wage was around $7 in 1983, by 1988 it was $4.50.
Unions like Service Employees International Union (SEIU) initially negotiated for better wages and working conditions building by building, sometimes directly with individual building owners, and later with individual cleaning contractors who employed janitors.
But both approaches fell short as the union was failing to adapt to the changing demographics of the workforce and changes in business practices. Employers were stonewalling the union, and even where workers successfully unionized at an individual contractor, building owners would switch to a non-union contractor. Workers faced enormous precarity, poverty wages, and unfair labor practices.
SEIU decided to pilot new industry-wide approaches. Rather than target individual building owners or sub-contractors, the union and workers shifted the fight to the commercial real estate industry. Justice for Janitors instead used innovative market-wide strategies to secure sectoral agreements that set high wage and benefits standards that covered more workers.
Under the leadership of former SEIU president John Sweeney, the union prioritized building services and created Justice for Janitors in Denver in 1986 and Los Angeles in 1988. Over the course of ten years, Justice for Janitors (J4J) launched simultaneous campaigns around the country. Its new organizing model succeeded in securing vital protections, higher wages, and benefits for people in janitorial services.
J4J used a range of tactics–including direct action sit-ins, street theater, and traffic blockaides–to win new contracts that secured higher wages, benefits, and job security. The J4J movement went on to successfully organize tens of thousands of janitorial workers around the country. Ultimately, more than 150,000 janitors have won a union since 1990.
Lessons for Today
“Principle one is you can’t win if you fight the wrong target. And principle two is, you can’t win if you hit the right target in the wrong place […] And so research is essential to identifying the right targets. It’s not easy, but it is essential. ”
-Jono Shaffer, LA Justice for Janitors Organizer
As we approach nearly 40 years since the launch of Justice for Janitors, this article outlines some of the strategic insights and applied learnings that can still inform advocates today.
We spoke to Stephen Lerner, credited as the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, and Jono Shaffer, who was the first organizer with Justice for Janitors, hired in Los Angeles in 1987. Both shared their invaluable insights from the early years of the Justice for Janitors campaign.
J4J campaign flyers (Credit: Memory Work | Los Angeles, UCLA)
The Use of Strategic Research
The Justice for Janitors campaign developed a sophisticated and highly effective approach to strategic research. In many respects, this formative research approach has continued to shape how strategic corporate research is done to this day.
According to Shaffer, they used research “to understand worker demographics; the development process including politics; ownership structures including financing; and new contractors/union companies spinning off non-union companies.”
The local campaigns often required two key types of research in order to build and innovate market-wide strategies.
The first was industry mapping that was designed to understand the market in each geography. They sought to identify the building owners (and where they got their money); the building managers (and who owned them); and the cleaning contractors. Mapping and engaging the tenants of building owners was another key strategy.
Understanding this complex web of building developers, building owners, and subcontracting janitorial companies in the commercial real estate industry was difficult because of the opaque and fissured nature of the sector. Much of this mapping needed to be tailored to each geography.
For instance, at the time LA had about 1,100 buildings “of size” (which the union defined as buildings with 100,000 square feet or more). As Washington DC’s J4J campaign mapped building by building, they also identified Americans with Disabilities Act violations in buildings. This initial mapping would help each geography narrow and drill down on a campaign target list.
The second was power structure analysis that helped identify key players and sources of leverage. “We had a methodology to think about the different levels of power […] it is an analysis of trying to figure out who has power, and the multiple ways to go after them, that guided the research,” said Lerner.
The rapidly changing nature of the commercial real estate industry meant that power mapping was essential to winning. Lerner shared that “the core idea behind Justice for Janitors was it didn’t matter if 100% of the workers wanted the union. It didn’t matter if 100% wanted to go on strike. The way the industry was structured, if you didn’t understand the various levers to pull, you wouldn’t win.”
J4J also often used power structure analysis to develop tools to help workers better understand their experiences at work. As Shaffer explained, it was important to “provide people [with] tools so they can understand what they’re experiencing. Because if you don’t understand what you’re experiencing, then you can’t fight it.”
This market mapping and power structure analysis helped Justice for Janitors campaigners and worker leaders to identify key owners, cleaning contractors, and worksites to target.
Strategic Research Before the Internet
This research before the internet required creativity and a lot of legwork. Shaffer reflected, “I’m blown away thinking about what we were able to figure out without any of the tools and resources that we currently have at our disposal.”
Desk Research
It often took an intensive multi-step process to determine building owners and company ownership structures. Justice for Janitors researchers and organizers frequently made in person visits to Halls of Records or Registry of Deeds to look up building lot numbers to determine legal ownership.
Once the owner was identified, researchers would then need to go to tax and recorder offices in each city to locate financial information and research an owner’s real estate plans. Those upcoming projects would then involve complex zoning and planning commission documents and permit processes.
J4J researchers would also draw on disclosures for publicly traded companies to identify information on finances, executive pay, and other key data points to inform company profiles.
Company profiles would often include information on total employers, leadership and board info, major competitors, shareholders, real estate operations, recent news, development projects, any known worker safety or violations. Profiles of CEO’s would also include info on their business connections, political contributions, tax incentives/subsidies, and philanthropic giving.
J4J also often used information that commercial real estate companies or developers were required to disclose as part of their development projects. For instance, developers often had to go through government Community Redevelopment Agencies to secure lucrative tax subsidies. Looking at those applications helped J4J understand key development power players and their finances. Because mayors typically appointed CRA boards, that often provided a useful source of leverage as well.
J4J’s desk research included close monitoring of real estate magazines, trade journals, and the real estate section of local newspapers to track relevant developments.
Public-facing Research and Data Points
J4J would release reports, newspaper ads, and flyers with compelling data points. For instance, many geographies had “Tale of Two Cities” style reports that contrasted the wealth of a building owner vs the poverty wages of janitors who cleaned their buildings. J4J localities often saw that as a foundational research project to highlight the experiences of workers.
Members of SEIU Local 399 hold a sign that reads, “L.A.’s Two Faces: Glamour and Wealth. Poverty and Despair” (Credit: Memory Work | Los Angeles, UCLA)
The Building Owners and Managers Association would issue reports that indicated the costs to operate a building. While these were designed to train business people on real estate development, J4J used that information to determine that for a “penny per square foot” you could give janitors living wages and health insurance. This became a banner demand across the country.
J4J found that data points could often really hit a point home. For instance, they calculated that a full time janitor in a commercial high rise cleans the equivalent of 20 single family homes in a night (~20,000 square feet) which was a persuasive talking point.
Field Research
While desk research was vital, sometimes the Justice for Janitors campaigns would find the most impactful information in the field.
In some geographies, workers engaged in more participatory research, including intelligence collection. According to Shaffer, who led the LA campaign, “we would ask the workers to take business cards off the desks of all the people they cleaned so that we could get an understanding of who was in the buildings,” along with their titles and roles.
Members were also engaged in community power mapping to understand what community spaces, like churches, community-based organizations, or neighborhoods, they belonged to where they could organize fellow workers and influence decision makers.
Unionized contractors also provided valuable intel to supplement the desk research. They had a vested interest in supporting parallel unionized efforts and could share useful information on building owners and other janitorial contractors.
At times J4J used more investigative techniques. In the early days of J4J, organizers did dumpster diving outside of key targets buildings’ to secure papers and other intel. J4J would also have allies reach out to key targets indicating they were graduate students in real estate looking to learn from the business person – this often secured useful background information.
A lucky break in following the money
In the late 1980’s Los Angeles Justice for Janitors organizer Jono Shaffer described one fortuitous moment when he passed the construction site of a particularly difficult building owner. The owner had been stonewalling the union and was not open to engaging in conversations. Shaffer said the building site had a “Coming soon” promotional sign announcing the new building. The sign listed Wells Fargo advisors and key investors, including prominent pension funds like the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
Shaffer walked back to the J4J office and shared this intel with J4J Organizing Director Cecile Richards (who would go on to lead Planned Parenthood). Without any databases or knowledge of pension funds, and well before “capital stewardship” was an important tactic among unions, they went to the library to access a book on pension funds. They discovered the Ohio pension funds investing in this LA development were part of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Shaffer described the moment as “totally serendipity that there’s a sign” listing Ohio pension funds and then J4J organizers have “the ability to make a phone call to somebody in the appropriate union who could call Wells Fargo Advisors.” Wells Fargo Advisors was a major asset manager for pension funds at the time.
According to Shaffer, “somebody had a conversation with somebody in Ohio who then had a conversation with Wells Fargo who then called the building owner who then called us […] I always like to say, you know, I remember when it was reading signs on the street!” According to Stephen Lerner, the attention on pensions supported one “of our first sort of innovations and breakthroughs which was getting a trillion dollars of public employee pension money to sign on to responsible contractor policies […] which essentially said in legal language, a building owner should use a unionized contractor.”
Key Takeaways That Still Resonate Today
“You have to figure out how to weaponize what you’re doing, and you can have the best research in the world and why somebody’s an asshole. But if you don’t translate in the way that workers and other people get it, it’s sort of meaningless.”
– Stephen Lerner
There are several takeaways from the J4J campaign that remain relevant for researchers and campaigns today.
First, strategic research should be conducted at the outset — as a foundational part of a campaign, not just an afterthought — in order to identify the best targets and sources of leverage
J4J saw research as a way to develop a global view of the company at the outset that would increase chances of a successful campaign. According to Lerner, “I think the big difference between Justice for Janitors and most campaigns is people start off with the workers, and then they get in the fight, and then they’re getting their ass kicked, and then they say, ‘oh, we need to research what the leverage is.’ We always said you had to front-end research.”
Shaffer drilled down his key organizing principles and the formative role research plays: “Principle one is you can’t win if you fight the wrong target. And principle two is, you can’t win if you hit the right target in the wrong place […] And so research is essential to identifying the right targets. It’s not easy, but it is essential.”
Second, to ensure strategic research is applied, it’s vital to have researchers, organizers, and communicators, and community members involved in strategy at the outset.
According to Lerner “from the very beginning, we always said, the researchers, organizers, communicators, and community, all needed to be in the same room developing the same plan. And so the research wasn’t research for research sake, but it would actually be actionable and fit together.”
Third, it’s important to identify where targets are most vulnerable and then tailor tactics and demands to maximize impact.
According to Shaffer, J4J used a “comprehensive campaigning approach” which included a mix of: worker organizing and action, connecting an existing unionized base to non-union workers, engaging impacted communities, a political strategy, engaging owners directly (not just the contractors), legal and regulatory strategies that put the target on the offensive, and public communications.
Justice for Janitors often found that building owners and powerful companies were most vulnerable where they wanted to expand. As Shaffer put it “people are vulnerable where they want to go, not where they are. And so understanding the growth agenda, the trajectory, the plan that an entity has, is where we’re going to find our best point of entry.”
J4J would often identify where targets were trying to secure investment money, tax subsidies, business partnerships, etc. They used both legal avenues and their political relationships to put pressure on building owners. For instance Mayors typically appointed boards of Community Reinvestment Act Boards. Developers had to go through CRA board’s for tax subsidies and get approval on projects from City Councils. J4J was able to use research and field intel to put highly effective pressure on their targets.
Fourth, where key information is not made publicly available, push for greater transparency to get disclosures and documents that advance organizing efforts.
In some instances, J4J would push for more information to be made public to enhance the intel they could organize with. For example DC J4J and SEIU successfully pushed for Initiative 51, a ballot initiative which required any information submitted during the property tax appeal process to be entered into the public record. This provided valuable information for organizing efforts.
Fifth, the combination of applied research with direct action/escalation can be highly effective.
LA Justice for Janitors would monitor a weekly newspaper put out by the LA Chamber of Commerce that tracked developments in the business community. One week they noticed a key developer was going before the City Council the following day. Though J4J didn’t have time to pull relevant records to identify what the developer was asking from city officials, five J4J organizers and leaders attended the meeting with J4J t-shirts.
After they added their name to the list of speakers during the public comment period, the developer’s lobbyist (who had previously avoided all contact) said they would agree to a meeting with J4J. “They knew that we were having a fight because we’d been trying to engage them and they had been stonewalling us, but it was this sort of visceral and experiential lesson about they were vulnerable because they were going in front of a political body that knew us” recalls Shaffer.
* * *
Though it’s been nearly four decades since the launch of the Justice for Janitors campaign, there is much that movements and campaigns today can still learn from J4J. From the importance of conducting research from the outset and fusing it with strategy, to identifying vulnerabilities in your target and crafting tactics toward this, and much more, this post has highlighted some of those key insights.
The J4J campaign leaves an important legacy for current and future movements — in labor and beyond — and is yet another example of how power research has played a critical support role in social movement history.
Maggie Corser is Director of Research and Policy at Popular Democracy. Maggie conducts research that advances Wall Street accountability and economic justice campaigns. Prior to joining Popular Democracy, Maggie worked at the Open Society Foundations and Amnesty International. Maggie has over fifteen years of organizing experience and has worked on low-wage and farmworker rights, gender and racial justice, and labor organizing campaigns. Her published research has been cited by numerous publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBS, NBC, Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, Reuters, Business Insider, and USA Today.