Workers' Pay Slashed At Office Tower

By Nick Pinto
POSTED MARCH 1, 2008

Until the end of January, Elpidio Sanchez had a good job as the foreman of a cleaning crew at the 26-story office tower at 123 William St., making good money. It was enough to cover the Bronx apartment he shares with his family, to provide for his children’s education, and even to sometimes take his family out to a restaurant, or to go to the theater with his son.

Sanchez felt relatively secure. First Quality, the company he had worked for over the past six years, was a union contractor, and the $22.11 per hour he was making was the rate negotiated by SEIU Local 32BJ.

But at the end of January Sanchez’s union representative asked him to call a meeting of all his workers.

When they gathered in the basement for the midnight meeting, the union rep told him that it was the last day of work for First Quality for him and his 19 co-workers. Jack Wasserman and his sons Paul and Jeffrey, who own 123 William St. through AM Holding Company, had fired the cleaning company, and were hiring a new one.

AM Property owns several high-value buildings in Lower Manhattan, including 75, 80 and 90 Maiden Lane and 65 Broadway.

The jobs of Sanchez and the other cleaning workers were secure—labor laws guaranteed them the right to stay on at the building under the new company, Servco. But their pay would be reduced by nearly 70 percent to $7.50 an hour. Their hours were also being cut back, and their health benefits were eliminated.

For the 20 building employees affected, the news was devastating.

John Schavone, who until February operated the building’s freight elevator, recently had a liver transplant. Now he is uninsured and worried he won’t be able to afford the medical care necessary to keep him healthy.

Sultana Tellic, 50, a Staten Island resident who has worked in the building for 18 years, is trying to figure out how she is going to pay her mortgage after the pay cut.

“They treated us like a dog,” said Leung Lee-Kew, another employee. “They treated us like a dog you leave behind in your apartment when you move. We didn’t know what to do.”

With 20 years under his belt, Leung is eligible for retirement, but he said he is staying on to fight alongside his fellow workers.

“I’ve been working with some of these people for more than 10 years now,” he said. “What they did to us is not right, and I’m not going to let it happen to them.”

Local 32BJ has resolved to fight the pay cut, appealing to such high-profile tenants of the building as the New York Department of State and the New York State Comptroller to pressure the building’s owners to reinstate the original compensation.

Alex Pineda, a union coordinator overseeing the rallies and other actions, said that he is optimistic about the outcome.

“I’ve seen this happen five times already, and we’ve won the other four,” he said. “Especially because we have state agencies in the building, there’s a certain amount of leverage. The key point in this fight is that there are a lot of politicians in the building.”

On Valentine’s Day, some of the off-duty cleaning workers paid a visit to 123 William Street in the afternoon to hand out candy and flyers to the tenants as they left for the day.

“The tenants have been very supportive,” said Alex Szederjesi, another worker in the building. “But you know, it’s not up to them.”

Another group of cleaners dropped in on the offices of AM Property Holding Corp. to deliver a valentine to its president, Paul Wasserman.

“I wanted to ask Mr. Wasserman, why can you pay for good schools for your children, but you’re taking away any future for me and my children? He blew up, threw the valentine away,” Sanchez  said. “He said ‘Get the f--- out of my building!’ He treated us like animals.”

In repeated phone calls, AM Property Holding and Servco declined to comment for this story.

The next week, about 100 people—123 William Street cleaners and other Local 32BJ members—held a rally outside the building, demanding that the workers’ salaries and benefits be restored. 

A parade of state and city politicians and religious leaders offered their support to the workers at the rally. Then 32BJ’s secretary–treasurer, Hector Figueroa, spoke rousingly to the rally, drawing noisy applause and approving drumbeats.

“What we need to say here today,” he told the crowd, “is that we are going to continue to fight  until the workers in this building are able to come here early every single day with a 32BJ contract and the same benefits!”

Still, a month after their pay cuts, the union’s efforts were showing no signs of success, and Elpidio Sanchez was having trouble sleeping at night as he contemplated his future.

His eldest daughter, an honor student at Hamilton College, expects to graduate this spring—assuming Sanchez can come up with the $10,000 balance on her tuition.

Sanchez’s second oldest, an honor student at Cathedral High School, was planning to go to college next year. He and his wife were sending their youngest, John, to third grade at the nearby Catholic school.

“I believe in higher education,” Sanchez said. “If you have it you have more of a future. That’s why I want my kids to have the best education possible, so they can have more opportunities than I do.”

Speaking to a reporter in his living room late last month, Sanchez said he is trying to remain hopeful that the union actions will pressure the building owner to restore his salary and health insurance. In the meantime, his family is trying to find little ways to control their expenses.

“We’re doing what we can,” he said. “If there’s a light that doesn’t need to be on in the apartment, we turn it off.”

Later, when the interview was over, Sanchez walked his guests to the door, wished them well, and then methodically turned out every light in the house, sitting back down on his couch in the gloom of his unlit apartment on an overcast day.

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