Former CEJ Director Joan Malone recounts story of Justice for Janitors

This year marks CEJ's 25th anniversary. To celebrate this remarkable milestone, we'll be telling 25 stories through this blog, and at our 25th Anniversary Awards Banquet on Friday, May 13th at 6:00PM. (To purchase tickets to the dinner, follow this link. Contact josh@buffalojwj.org for more banquet information.)

CEJ has been blessed to have fought side by side with so many special people in the struggle for jobs with justice over the years. It is this legacy of people coming together, transforming their own lives and the lives of others by living to answer the call for justice in their community and in the world. It is in this spirit that we would like to share with you these stories, to open windows into the rich history of CEJ and the stories of those who make up that history.

Our first story comes from CEJ's former Executive Director, Joan Malone, whose presence remains felt in the organization to this day. Here she recounts the story of how CEJ helped win a new contract for a group of janitors at the Marine Midland Bank (now HSBC) building at the foot of Main St.

“One of my favorite stories was from early in CEJ’s history, before people in the broader community knew who we were. There was a group of janitors at the Marine Midland (now HSBC) Bank’s building in downtown Buffalo, who were being treated awfully, and overworked. I remember talking to them and they would describe how they had to clean 20 floors a day. It was just a terrible situation, and we knew that we needed to do something about this.

It was also clear, and we knew that we were up against an enormous power. Back then, as it is now, there was a power structure that existed between the wealthy companies and the elected officials.

The building owner contracted with the janitors, who were SEUI members at the time. The bank was saying that since they were not the building owners, there was nothing they could do about the situation. And the owners would say the same thing. So they were playing off each other. But we knew that since the bank was the largest tenant – they occupied 80% of the building, they could address the situation if they wanted to.

We used a lot of different tactics to bother the bank. We would have “fax days” where we would jam up their fax machines by having people send faxes to them all day saying “Justice for Janitors” and things like that. We created an alternative annual report about all of their bad practices, and we would distribute these at the baseball games next door. We had them as the “Grinch of the Year” on the front page of the news at Christmas time.

But what really won it was an action that never happened. The bank had just built the new downtown arena, which they were naming after themselves, and they had planned a big opening event for all of their wealthy friends. It was going to be a very big ordeal and it was a highly publicized event. Our plan was to have people kneeling and praying for justice for these workers in front of the entrance on the night of the event. People would have to walk over them to go in and eat their caviar.

We had lots of people volunteer to do this, and were well prepared to carry out the action. That was when we got a call from the mayor begging us not to do this. At this point that Marine Midland finally gave in.

It’s not that they saw that it was the right thing to do. It was a business decision. Banks are community institutions and they need to have a good standing in the community and be seen as decent and respectable in order for them to be successful.

The main thing that stood out from this is that there is a clear moral right and wrong. And that it was just so clear and obvious that we were on the side of what is right, what is the right thing to do. Everyone understands and instantly can see right and wrong. This was why CEJ was able to have victories, to be effective- it was our ability to communicate that with the broader community.

From this, I learned about the power of story to win community support through clearly demonstrating a moral imperative. We would do lots of speaking engagements and the janitors would tell their story at churches or community groups. People, when they heard the story and met these workers would immediately see what the right thing to do was.

It also taught me to do your homework, to really understand an issue and see all of the sides involved. There is nothing like directly meeting with the people who are impacted by a situation – you can read all you want about it, but the best way to really know is to meet with people and you will understand what they are going through immediately and why it needs to change.”

-Joan Malone (March, 2011)