Kansas City janitors win new contract with a raise to $15 an hour and paid sick days

Kansas City Star BY KYNALA PHILLIPS

https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article264926549.html

Sandy Hinson, 77, loves her job as a janitor at Crown Center. Each morning she wakes up at 3 a.m., does a little exercise and drinks a single cup of coffee before driving downtown to start her shift.

The job has never paid the most money, but Hinson said she always wakes up excited to go to work. “It’s not just a job,” Hinson said. “I love what I do, and I love meeting people and interacting with people and sharing life stories with the tenants.”

Hinson is one of 900 Kansas City janitors that successfully won better wages, paid sick leave and benefits in their new three-year union contract as members of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 1.

“We are excited, because we have been waiting so long for this — for more benefits and better pay,” Hinson said. She has been a member of the union the entire 25 years she’s worked at Crown Center and talked with The Star back in 2016 about the push for higher wages.

This summer, janitors working at places like the IRS Campus, Crown Center, City Hall and more will see an 18% increase in wages, bumping wages up to $15 per hour for full time day-shift workers.

Minimum wage in Missouri is $11.15 an hour. Union janitors also got better annual increases in pay, Juneteenth as a new paid holiday, and two more paid sick days — for a total of three sick days per year — in the new contract.

“Now in the wintertime, it’s important that we have sick days,” Hinson said. “You have to have some time where you can heal, and get over whatever ailments that you have. And we have not had that yet.”

Before the contract was signed, downtown janitors in Kansas City were making on average $13.53 per hour. Most full-time workers clocked around 30 hours per week, bringing home about $1,800 a month and around $21,000 a year before the contract, according to SEIU spokesperson Bailey Koch. Hinson said she was making $11.50 an hour.

She bakes and sells cakes and cobblers on the side to help cover expenses. “The cost of living is so high now,” Hinson said. “The new contract will impact a lot of workers because the young people have young families and they are struggling to make ends meet just like I am.”

The contract comes as rent prices in Kansas City continue to rise, with a median rent of around $1,300, according to Realtor.com’s June rental report. Over the past year, the cost of rent in Kansas City has gone up by 13%. Downtown apartments in some neighborhoods closest to the places where many of the SEIU janitors work have increased by up to 42%.

At that old pay rate, the average janitor would have had to pay more than 75% of their monthly income toward rent. People who pay more than 30% of their income toward rent are considered cost burdened, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. People who pay more than 50% of their income toward rent are considered severely cost-burdened.

This year has also seen some of the highest inflation rates across the board. In June 2022, the national inflation rate rose to 9.1%, which impacted the cost of things like gas, groceries and other essentials. “There’s a lot of work involved in what we do,” Hinson said. “I try to encourage the workers to pull together and speak for what we know that we deserve.”