Mary Garza

Houston’s Mary Garza began working as a janitor for national cleaning contractor ABM at Houston’s 36-floor Pennzoil Place in September of 2006. The work was hard and the pay was miserable.

“We were only paid $5.15 an hour, no benefits,” Mary says. “The manager was strict and we didn’t get any respect. Everybody was scared to speak.”

Mary recalls how one day she and her coworkers celebrated a birthday. “They made us eat our cake in the bathroom,” Mary says. “I will always remember the humiliation we felt.”

Mary’s coworkers started talking about the union.

“I didn’t know how the union worked or anything,” Mary says. “I had a lot of doubt at the beginning. I thought, ‘we’re going to have problems, we’re going to get fired. I was afraid.”

On October 23, Mary went to work. “There was a group of coworkers outside the building,” Mary says. “Everybody was saying, ‘don’t go in, don’t go in, come out on strike! There was also a bunch of security guards telling us to go in the building.” 

What was later to be recognized as the biggest victory for organized workers the South had seen in 50 years—the Houston janitors strike of 2006—had begun. Mary faced an immediate decision. “I decided not to go in,” she says.

“I was excited and scared at the same time,” Mary says. “I was afraid about what might happen with the police and what might happen at work. I told myself, ‘Let God’s will be done.’”

Mary went with her coworkers to 1100 Louisiana, where a huge crowd of striking downtown janitors was gathering. “For the first time, I didn’t feel scared,” she says. “I felt more secure. I thought it was impossible that they fire all of us. I thought, this is serious, this is enormous.”  

The striking janitors began to march. “I felt good, I felt powerful, I had the sensation that they couldn’t do anything to us now.”

As the days passed and the janitors continued protesting, Mary got more involved in planning strike activities to keep up her coworkers’ morale. The strikers were gaining national and international attention. “It was incredible to see how our invisibility as janitors was over. All the television stations, all the helicopters, everybody was paying attention to us.”   

“I was there when we blocked traffic in the Galleria,” Mary says. “Wow! That was amazing. A few people were giving us the finger but most people told us to keep going, to not stop.”

Mary was also at Capitol and Travis when Houston police horses trampled protestors engaged in civil disobedience. “We were marching along Louisiana,” Mary says. “The horses were with us. Suddenly they took off down the street. We all started running. When we got to Capitol and Travis, I could see how the horses were on top of our brothers and sisters. Nobody expected that. We all started to yell, so that they knew that we were with them, that we supported them. They could have been badly hurt.”

Four people were injured and 44 were arrested during the act of non-violent civil disobedience. One of those arrested was a coworker from Mary’s building. “She spent two or three days in jail in terrible conditions,” Mary says. “She told me that there was very little food, no toilet paper, and that they didn’t give them water.”

After a four-week strike, the janitors won their first-ever union contract. The agreement more than doubled the janitors income and gave them access to affordable health care. 

Today Mary and her coworkers are preparing to negotiate a new agreement with their employers.

“We’re moving forward,” she says. “But I don’t want anybody in Houston to forget about the strike of 2006.”