Committee for Cleaners' Rights

In the 1980s, the Committee for Cleaners' Rights mobilized unions, community groups, and activists to pressure the government of Ontario to introduce labor legislation to help secure job security for cleaners and [Page 363]improve their prospects for joining a union. The committee met two ministers of labor in the Liberal Party's government of Ontario to argue for the importance of introducing a clause in the provincial Labor Code that would extend “successor rights”to cleaners. This legislation would have improved cleaners' ability to retain their jobs if, or when, their cleaning contractor was outbid in the tendering of a bid to clean a building. In addition, under successor rights, a contractor was obliged to recognize and abide by—where present—the existing union contract, even if the original “signatory”to that agreement were defeated in the tendering exercise. However, in spite of the committee's campaigns to rectify this gap in labor legislation, cleaners today remain exposed to a deregulating labor market and a postindustrial citizenship that has no sympathy for cleaners' issues and protections.

The Committee for Cleaners' Rights was the creation of a coalition of unions, community groups like the Portuguese Interagency Network, and New Democratic Party (NDP) politicians, including Bob Rae who later became the first NDP premier of the province of Ontario in 1990. The committee organized a meeting with William Wrye, minister of labor, to impress upon him the insecurities cleaners face in the labor market and to consider the option of extending successor rights to them. This first campaign failed in getting Minister Wrye to make a move. A second campaign evolved out of the committee's meetings and focused on organizing a petition in the community for labor law change in support of cleaners' rights. Ten thousand signatures were collected and brought to the office of the NDP's labor critic, Bob Mackenzie. The latter used the petition to introduce a Private Member's Bill to the provincial legislature for the purpose of getting successor rights protection for cleaners. Bill 132 was presented to members of the legislature and voted on. The vote count defeated the bill, 41 to 23. All NDP members of the legislature, as well as three Conservative Party members voted in favor, whereas all Liberal Party members voted against. Shortly after this disappointment, the Committee for Cleaners' Rights made another attempt to get the minister of labor (this time, Greg Sorbara) to reconsider the case of building cleaners. Minister Sorbara refused to proceed with any legislative change, leaving the committee frustrated and out of steam. After a decade of organizing and politicking for legislative change, the Committee for Cleaners' Rights disbanded in 1989.

The importance of the committee in mobilizing a coalition of groups—some of which are intense rivals in organizing workers in the same sector—cannot be underestimated. Nonetheless, some aspects of their practices need to be questioned. First, the committee focused on Ontario alone, leaving unions with a national orientation—such as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers—with little to mobilize cleaners elsewhere in the country. Second, the proposed legislative change—successor rights—would do little to bridge the employment relation between cleaners and other workers with whom they share work space. Cleaners would remain contract workers employed by contractors rather than in-house employees sharing the same employer as most other workers in property management. This is an important point because it relates to issues of building solidarity toward resolving common workplace issues. Third, the committee seemed focused on successor rights as if it were a panacea, in the process displaying little vision on how to move with a broader approach to cleaners' reality. This lack of vision partly explains the disbanding of the Committee for Cleaners' Rights.

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