By Isaac Phan Nay | The Tyee
Approximately 3,000 janitors across Metro Vancouver are gearing up for citywide collective agreement bargaining.
Workers at 11 employers across Metro Vancouver will be heading into talks before their contracts expire at the end of May.
Emyll Garcia has worked as a cleaner for seven years. She’s president of Service Employees International Union Local 2’s property services branch steering committee — a group of cleaners guiding collective bargaining.
She said the citywide bargaining gives thousands of cleaners more bargaining power with multinational employers.
“It gives us strength rather than doing it one to one,” Garcia said. “It’s the strength and the solidarity to fight and stand up for what we deserve.”
This May, cleaners will be heading to re-bargain contracts for the first time since the citywide negotiations started in 2023. Cleaners will be pushing for living wages and pension plans while employers try to keep their largest cost — labour — in check.
One expert says that while the agreement offers better employment standards in a precarious industry, the citywide agreement underscores the need for sectoral bargaining in B.C.
None of the employers responded to requests for comment.
Metro Vancouver janitors at eight employers — including Bee-Clean Building Maintenance, Cushman & Wakefield and Alpine Building Maintenance — first unionized with SEIU Local 2 in June 2023.
The eight employers agreed to contract talks for approximately 2,500 cleaners in Metro Vancouver at a single table.
The final agreements brought the cleaners new provisions, including increased vacation pay; upped the premium for overnight work from 50 cents an hour to 75; and got the janitors off work on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Two years later, the negotiations have grown to include about 500 more cleaners at three more employers across Metro Vancouver.
They’re heading back to negotiations this May. In preparation, steering committee member Rekha Chander said she’s been visiting dozens of work sites across the Lower Mainland to survey workers about their needs.
She says the current rates of pay are not enough to support members.
“Rent, groceries, everything — we cannot get that for what the company gives us,” Chander said.
Starting rates are below the living wage
The starting rate is $18.66 per hour for light-duty cleaners, who are responsible for everyday cleaning tasks like sweeping, and $19.38 for heavy-duty cleaners, who often operate industrial cleaning appliances or equipment like forklifts.
That’s on the low end of the pay scale for cleaners. WorkBC data shows light-duty cleaners in the province make an hourly wage between $17.40 and $25.28, and heavy-duty cleaners make between $17.40 and $31.31.
Meanwhile, research from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives last year puts Metro Vancouver’s living wage at $27.05 per hour.
“Vancouver is very expensive to live in,” Chander said. “If we are getting near-minimum wage all the time, that’s not good.”
Garcia says the cleaners are also pushing for pension plans.
“We have so many older people working, and when they retire after working for 10 to 20 years, they get nothing,” she said. “We deserve to have a pension plan. It’s retirement security and we need it to live.”
A hard-fought battle for sectoral bargaining
Véronique Sioufi, a researcher with the BC Society for Policy Solutions, said the citywide agreement is an example of hard-fought sectoral bargaining, which allows all employees in an industry to collectively bargain as a single unit.
She said it’s particularly difficult to build an industry-wide agreement in B.C. because the province does not have legislation enabling sectoral bargaining. Instead, Sioufi said, B.C.’s current system of organizing is set up for unions to organize workers at workplaces or on shop floors.
But cleaning employers often hire subcontractors in small numbers to clean particular buildings, meaning workers are spread across a wide area in small numbers.
“That makes it very difficult for certain groups of workers to organize,” she said. “It’s very hard to get a collective agreement when you’re just two people. That’s not a lot of bargaining power.”
The barrier to entry to work as a cleaner is low, she said. Workers are often hired part time or on contract positions, letting companies quickly adjust their workforce.
She added cleaning employers often compete with others based on price — which usually comes from downward pressure on employee salary.
She said citywide negotiations better address flexible hiring practices and prevent employers from undercutting their competition by underpaying employees.
“If all these employers have to pay their workers the same, they’re going to have to compete on some other basis,” Sioufi said. “That could be innovation or improving the quality of the service.”
Still, Sioufi said, every employer covered in the contract had to agree to come to the table. She said many cleaners in Vancouver are not unionized or are not part of this bargaining unit, allowing excluded employers to continue pressuring salaries lower.
She said the agreement highlighted the need in B.C. for sectoral bargaining legislation, which would let entire sectors advocate for better working conditions without leaving certain employers or gig workers behind. She pointed to how teachers or nurses bargain as an example.
“I can’t imagine the number of years of effort it took to get them here,” she said. “It’s a great example of a kind of sectoral bargaining, but I would hope that in the future, it wouldn’t have to be this difficult for everyone else.”
