Justice for Janitors Protest, June 15, 1990

This location was the site of a violent clash by police against peaceful protestors who were part of the Justice for Janitors union and police on June 15, 1990. Thanks to media footage of the event, the city was forced to pay out over $2.2 million for the victims of police brutality. However, at the time of the protest, the event also led to an end to protests by a largely immigrant workforce in the face of low wages, unsafe working conditions, and the lack of health insurance or paid sick days for janitorial employees. Most of the protesters were working for minimum wage, then $4.50 an hour. To publicize their cause Justice for Janitors mobilized by holding rallies in the Century City area, and after a few weeks of small scuffles with law enforcement, police officers were alerted to a planned peaceful march from Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills to office buildings in Century City. The police responded with force. Protestors, mostly consisting of immigrant women, were shoved back to Olympic Boulevard by officers trying to prevent their progression to Century Park East. Media attention led to a new contract that included a small raise and health insurance.

Overtaking Chicago as the second-largest city in the nation, Los Angeles was booming in the 1980s. The city was flooded with new opportunities for investment bankers, lawyers, and business leaders in the newly built modern high-rise towers. Another workforce sector traveled to the very same towers in the evening to work as janitors. Working for low wages and without benefits, janitors saw the high rises not as beacons of opportunity but as symbols of the vast chasm between the wealth of others and their daily experience.

As long as the plight of janitorial workers was relatively hidden from the general public, leaders of the nascent movement believed they would have little success in mobilizing public opinion. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) worked to bring awareness to the struggle of working people, supporting their rights to fair wages and compensation. Established after World War II, the Los Angeles chapter of the SEIU had a strong local presence and many union members. In the 1980s, companies increasingly hired non-union contractors and janitorial companies. This led to plummeting wages and a weakened union in Los Angeles.

As experienced union janitors either changed jobs or moved away, contracting companies enthusiastically recruited immigrant employees with fewer options for employment. Janitors worked for as little as $4.50 an hour, cleaned more office spaces than ever before, and worked without sick leave and health insurance. In response, SEIU created the Justice for Janitors union in 1985 to specifically target issues faced by the largely immigrant workforce of the non-union contract cleaning industry. The effort gained recognition at a national level, but with little progress in this suburb of Los Angeles, the Justice for Janitors campaign decided to try new tactics in Century City.

Scholar Christina Springer likens the effort to an “organizational laboratory” with members conducting research to consider various tactics and strategies. They established committees that contacted local governmental agencies, built relationships with Latino churches and neighborhoods, and taught people about their legal rights. After minimal signs of progress, Justice for Janitors decided to focus on the plight of janitorial workers employed by International Service Systems. ISS was at the time the largest contract employer of janitorial services in the world, and in Century City, they were contracted to clean eleven out of thirteen office buildings.

On June 15, 1990, janitors and their supporters peacefully marched from Roxbury Park to a rally in Century City to draw attention to pay and working conditions at ISS. As protestors were turning onto Century Park East from Olympic Boulevard, they were met by over one hundred police officers fully clad in riot gear who ordered them to disperse. Protestors instead moved from the sidewalks to the middle of the street and sat down in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Claiming that the march was an illegal assembly, the police ordered them to leave. Threats escalated and some members of the LAPD began beating the protestors with batons. Ana Veliz, protesting in hopes of securing health insurance for her unborn child, was clubbed three times in the back. Four days later, after being hospitalized for her injuries, she was told that she had miscarried. 

Sgt. de la Torre of the LAPD said in a statement to the LA Times that the show of force by the officers was justified owing to the much larger number of protesters in comparison to officers. He was earlier quoted saying the the police acted to force the protestors to move. Later investigations concluded that the use of force was not warranted, and some graphic images of the treatment of protestors circulated in media outlets across the country, leading to calls for an investigation. One photo depicted a middle-aged, unarmed Latino man being struck in the face and body by two separate officers wearing helmets and wielding batons. In the coming months, ISS signed the union agreement that immediately raised all salaries to $5.20 an hour while also guaranteeing health insurance for all workers in the coming year. The day is remembered as Justice for Janitors Day and is celebrated by continuing calls for economic equality and immigration reform.

Baker, Bob. “Police Use Force to Block Strike March,” The Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1990.

Brodkin, Karen. Making Democracy Matter. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2007.

“LA Police Officers Beating a Striking a Protester Became a Symbol of the Janitors’ Organizing Drive.” Socialjusticehistory.org. Photo. Los Angeles, CA, 15 June 1990. 

Milkman, Ruth. L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.

Springer, Christina E. “The Organizing Laboratory: Century City.” Working L.A., 12 Feb. 2021, socialjusticehistory.org.  

Waldinger, Roger, Chris Erickson, Ruth Milkman, Daniel Mitchell, Abel Valenzuela, Kent Wong, and Maurice Zeitlin. “Helots No More: A Case Study of the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles.” In Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies, edited by Kate Bronfenbrenner, 102–19. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

“When police beat janitors--but janitors won justice.” SEIU.org. Photo. Los Angeles, CA, 15 June 1990. 

Wong, Kent. "A New Labor Movement for a New Working Class: Unions, Worker Centers, and Immigrants." Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 36, no. 1 (2015): 205-13.