Bottom-Up Organizing: How We Got Clean Porta-Johns

The first day I showed up on the Marriott construction site in downtown Detroit, everyone warned me about the state of our bathrooms.

You could smell them halfway across most floors. They were full in 24 hours, urinals were often clogged, and some people had taken to using buckets and hiding them in closets.

Every electrician already had the same idea: we wanted the cleaning schedule changed from twice a week to three times.

I had a long conversation with the steward about what had been tried. The first instinct of a construction worker is to “drag” (quit), drive over to the union hall, and pick up a new job. As expected, there was a steady trickle of drags, but no improvement to conditions.

OSHA had been called and walked the site, only to say that the number of bathrooms was up to their standard. The electrical contractor had been notified, but because the bathrooms were for all the trades, our bosses didn’t feel it was their responsibility to pay for additional cleaning.

Our Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 58 contract only gestures vaguely to “sanitary facilities,” and protects us explicitly should we leave the site to find a “sanitary” facility. This clause was exercised regularly, but no one could say for sure whether the boss was even aware we were leaving.

A PLAN IS HATCHED

I was asked to fill in for the steward while he was out for a few days. When I walked the job to make sure everyone had my number, more than half the conversations touched on the bathrooms. I then introduced myself to the stewards from other trades, who were all hearing the same from their members.

We hatched the idea to take the issue above our bosses and straight to the general contractor (who hires out each trade and is responsible for the job site at large).

Together we wrote a letter titled “Unacceptable Bathroom Conditions,” which opened politely and assumed the boss was ignorant of the problem. The letter referenced the impact on our work and a widespread feeling that we were not being treated with respect.

We reminded him that many of us had decades of experience and were not new to the idea of using a plastic box as a bathroom, but these conditions were exceptionally bad.

We suggested that the person responsible for scheduling should use our bathrooms for a week to better assess the need for more cleanings, hand sanitizer, and a wash station. We gave one week for a response.

BUT WILL IT WORK?

Every worker who was presented with the letter signed immediately. Most people felt like the bosses would just laugh at our demands, but were interested in the idea of swarming their trailer at lunch and forcing them to read it in front of us.

We fielded many suggestions, from going straight home after delivering the letter to tipping over porta-johns on our way. We told our co-workers that if our response date came and went without change, we would be coming back around “to have a different conversation.”

But first the demand had to be made collectively and clearly. Many of our one-on-one talks were focused on assuring the workers that we would escalate if the letter went ignored: “This is only the beginning.”

We warned people about possible counter-strategies from the boss, and stressed the importance of demonstrating solidarity, especially across the trades. We didn’t invite the officers at the union hall or our reps, though we did inform them. “Every member is a steward” has become sort of a slogan for us.

IT WORKS

In the end we had 105 signatures and roughly 35 folks across four trades who gave up their lunch break to deliver the letter. The contractor read it, was brought outside to look at us, and immediately conceded to our terms.

Maybe they didn’t know how bad the bathrooms were, maybe they didn’t know how widely and deeply felt the issue was on site, or maybe they figured it was fine to ignore.

All we know for sure is, when even a fraction of us came together, with the backing of three times as many signatures, it didn’t matter if we had the union hall behind us. We are the union, the working people who don’t just walk away from a job which doesn’t satisfy us, and our demands have been met.

Kevin Szczesny is a member of IBEW Local 58 (Electrical Workers) in Detroit. A version of this story first appeared in his union newsletter.