S2E2: Stephen Lerner on Justice for Janitors: A comeback story that continues today

Craft of Campaigns

In this episode, we’ll hear about how tens of thousands of workers lost nearly all of their workplace protections, and then spent two decades campaigning against some of the most powerful Fortune 500 companies to win them back. Stephen Lerner, architect of the campaign, discusses how a realignment of global capital led the union to lose nearly all its bargaining power in the 1980s (17:47), how a few in the union decided to try a different approach (19:26), how they decided which building owners were the most important to target (38:15), and how they used creative tactics to undermine their political and community support, including blocking bridges the leaders of Congress used to get to work (41:27).
Stephen Lerner is a labor and community organizer who has spent more than three decades organizing hundreds of thousands of janitors, farm workers, garment workers, and other low-wage workers into unions, resulting in increased wages, first-time health benefits, paid sick days, and other improvements on the job. He was the Director of SEIU's Property Service Division, served on SEIU's International Executive Board and is the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. He has published numerous articles charting a path for a 21st century labor movement focused on growth and meeting the challenges of a global economy. In 2014 he helped launch the Bargaining for Common Good campaign. Today he is a Senior Fellow at the Kalmanovitz institute at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Check out a writeup on this campaign at The Forge

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