With Justice for All?

In less than two years, McAlevey and her colleagues have put the issue of affordable housing front and center on the public agenda in Stamford. They've forced the city to halt the demolition of three housing projects and they have stalled plans to privatize other city-run housing complexes as well as a nursing home. They've been so persuasive, in fact, that George Jepsen, the Democratic state- senate majority leader -- a man with one of the most probusiness voting records in the state legislature -- went so far as to appoint McAlevey to a position on a state commission on affordable housing.

Her fellow labor leaders say that they admire McAlevey's energy and tactical savvy. "She has great ideas, and she is willing to carry them out herself," says Jerry Brown, president of District 1199. "She doesn't take long lunches or disappear off to Washington, DC."

She is certainly not afraid to stir the pot with 1960s-style demonstrations. A year ago, in a noisy demand for affordable housing and higher wages for city workers, McAlevey brought 250 protesters -- including city workers, public-housing tenants, civil-rights activists, and clergy members -- to the sidewalk outside Mayor Dannell Malloy's waterfront home. Their message to the mayor: If you won't come to our neighborhoods, we will come to yours.

Sometimes McAlevey uses a different kind of storytelling. In early 1999, she helped Brown organize a large contingent of his health-care workers and send them to Hartford to educate legislators there about the sorry condition of the nursing-home industry. Health-care costs had soared, the workers reported, while service quality had deteriorated. And their wages had remained stagnant -- at little more than minimum wage. Feeling the pressure, the state legislature passed a bill that released funds for "wage enhancement" at every nursing home in the state, including the Stamford-run Smith House Health Care Center. But later, when Mayor Malloy tried to use the wording of the bill to earmark the lion's share of the windfall to pay off an old contract, rather than to raise wages, he figured that he'd get support from the Stamford Board of Representatives. Instead, the board voted 39 to 1 to recommend that the bulk of the money be used to fund increases in salaries and in staffing at Smith House.

One of the biggest wins to date for the Organizing Project has been a new contract for the janitors who work at the Stamford office building that houses the U.S. operations of Warburg Dillon Read (now known as UBS Warburg), the London-based financial-services giant. "Warburg is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and the janitors in this building were getting $6.15 an hour, with no pension or health benefits," McAlevey fumes. Warburg's initial response to the janitors' demands was predictable: "It's not our problem." The company argued that it did not control the salaries of janitors, who are employed by a firm that is contracted to manage the building's operations. As one Warburg executive put it, "We just get the bill at the end of the month and pay it."

McAlevey had heard that response before: "That's the same excuse that companies like Liz Claiborne and the Gap use when they contract with a Korean company for, say, 10,000 sweaters with pink bows. The apparel companies say that they don't have responsibility for what goes on in the factories. That strategy won't work here."

The janitors had one political factor weighing in their favor. As they were making demands on Warburg, the company was in the process of asking the Connecticut legislature for $147 million in tax relief in return for expanding its Stamford workforce from 2,200 to 3,200. So the Organizing Project injected itself into that debate. It brought in Jaime Huaman, who earns $12,792 a year cleaning offices in Warburg's building, to testify before the legislature's finance committee. "Help us get out of poverty," the Guatemalan immigrant pleaded. "There is no reason for us to be living in poverty when we're cleaning the building of one of the richest banks in the world."

With the tax incentives hanging in the balance, Warburg felt it prudent to pressure Colin Service Systems Inc., the contractor that officially employs the janitors, to reach a three-year deal that provided raises of up to 40%, along with pension and health benefits. The new contract was a major victory. But even with the raises, the janitors still can't afford to live in Stamford. A recent study showed that a worker has to earn $44,000 a year ($21.27 an hour) to afford an average two-bedroom apartment in Stamford. That's a far cry from what the new contract pays. Worse, standard pay for janitors in Fairfield County is still $6.15 an hour.