Janitors in California and Sacramento demand better working conditions

Dante Butler, a representative of the SEIU United Service Workers union, works as a security guard in Sacramento. He was among the small pool of children and workers wearing short-sleeved purple “Hombro a Hombro” shirts and rallying for change on Thursday.

Janitors and essential workers marched to City Hall on Thursday as part of a collective movement across California to begin contract negotiations and honor the death of a Los Angeles custodian who died in the building where he worked.

Tomas Mejía was working an evening shift as a janitor at the Park La Brea apartment complex when he attempted to prevent an intruder from entering the building. During a scuffle over keys, the suspect stabbed Mejía multiple times. He died after arriving at a local hospital.

“If we don’t make ourselves seen or heard, we’ll just slip back into obscurity,” Butler said.

Butler recalls hearing security guards in another city who swapped out their custodian gray jackets for neon ones during the pandemic so workers could be seen. The point of Thursday’s protest was similar to that.

“We can’t go back to wearing gray. We can’t go back into the background. We need to be upfront,” he said.

Mejía, a member of the SEIU West Local, was killed a day after SEIU members marched in downtown Los Angeles and across the country to bring attention to issues of pay and safety for custodians on Justice for Janitors Day. It’s a battle essential workers fought throughout the pandemic. Mejía served as an executive of the union’s Justice for Janitors board and advocated for the safety of workers.

“This is your building, your voice matters,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told the crowd. “You own this building as much as anybody else does. Your fight is our fight.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2021 at 2:50 PM.