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Six hundred cleaners who clean for Target, Macy's and Best Buy stores in the Twin Cities have won the right to have a voice on the job in a union. This is the first time retail janitors have come together across an entire region to win the right to bargain collectively. 

Maricela Flores, a 43-year-old immigrant from Mexico, was so unhappy at her job as a cleaner at a Target store just outside Minneapolis – unhappy about having to work seven days a week, about being paid $8 an hour, about not having health coverage or paid sick days – that she did something unusually risky. She went on strike even though she was not part of a labor union.

When Flores, a mother of five, walked out in February 2013, she was one of just eight janitors from stores in the Twin Cities to go on strike that day to demand better conditions. Flores was relieved not to get fired.

Now, 44 months later and after a highly unorthodox organizing drive that included six more one-day strikes, Flores and her colleagues are declaring victory. Last Thursday, they announced that 600 janitors have won union recognition and will soon start collective bargaining in the hope of winning higher pay, health coverage and other improvements.

“I could have done nothing, but I chose to fight,” Flores said in Spanish. “This has been a long fight, but now I feel overjoyed. All the hard work has paid off.”

With this victory, janitors like Maricela Flores are able to start bargaining and improve their working conditions. “We want fair work scheduling, health insurance, higher wages,” she said. “All these things would allow me to be more involved in the daily lives of my children and to have a better quality of life.”

Called "unorganizable" by many, retail cleaners in the Twin Cities took a bold stance and, in partnership with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL), took to the streets for their fight to be recognized. They went on strike. They held rallies. They even did hunger strikes. Now, their success is inspiring working people across the country.

Photo credit: Minnesota Star Tribune