The glittering skyscrapers that came to dominate the downtown Los Angeles skyline often cost multiple millions of dollars to build, their owners more likely to be banks, hedge funds and multinational corporations, rather than individuals. These corporate owners outsourced their building services to property management companies who, in turn, contracted with cleaning companies who competed to offer the lowest cost services. Their customers, those who rented space in their buildings, often didn’t realize that the janitors who serviced their offices paid their workers sub-minimum wages. Owing to these subcontracting arrangements, most janitors worked through the night, their labor all but invisible to tenants in the building.

J4J took aim at these practices by targeting building tenants with their outreach. In April 1989, during their drive to unionize Bradford Building Services, they held an action on Secretary’s Day (April 22), in which workers distributed flowers and fliers to clerical workers in buildings downtown. Their hope was that by targeting secretaries— who were often responsible for paying the bills to cleaning companies like Bradford, but unaware of how terribly they treated their workers—they might encourage them to pressure their bosses to demand better working conditions for the janitors who cleaned the building.

This leaflet was among those distributed during outreach events like Secretary’s Day. It explains that the janitors in five downtown buildings stopped work in November 1989 to protest illegal firing and unfair conditions under the NLRA and emphasizes that the workers oppose their employers, NOT the customers (building tenants), and asks for their support.

From the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Service Workers West (USWW) records, circa 1935-2008 (LSC.1940), UCLA Library Special Collections.