Rosalinda Rocha

In 2006, Houston janitor Rosalinda Rocha turned on the television set. She was amazed at what she saw.

“There was a huge crowd of janitors in purple t-shirts marching through the streets downtown,” Rosalinda says. “The announcer said that they were on strike. I said to myself, I’m a janitor, why am I not on strike?”

Rosalinda, paid just $5.15 an hour, would have liked to stand with her coworkers. What she did not know at the time was that her employer, cleaning contractor PJS, did not recognize the union that Houston janitors had formed throughout the city. All she could do was watch the four-week strike unfold.

By striking the janitors won a collective bargaining agreement that would double their pay through increased wages and working hours, allow workers to take a vacation, and give them access to quality health care.

In 2008, after watching her fellow janitors get regular yearly pay raises, Rosalinda left PJS in order to work for ABM, a large national cleaning company who had recognized their workers’ union.

“Of course I got involved in the union right away,” Rosalinda says. After signing a union card with the Service Employees International Union, Rosalinda began signing her coworkers up as well.

Rosalinda now is paid $7.75 per hour and has affordable access to the Houston Service Workers Clinic, a model facility for providing low-cost, hassle-free, and effective personalized health care to low-wage patient populations.

Rosalinda and her coworkers work hard to keep their office building—Transocean Tower—clean. The work can be grueling. “We have 5 people for 7 floors,” she says. “And we only have five hours to do it.” 

Although she works two jobs, Rosalinda has not yet achieved the American Dream. She is still unable to buy a house or save for her children’s college education.  But she knows the way forward—hard work and making her union with her coworkers as strong as it can be. These days, Rosalinda usually wears SEIU’s official color—purple, just like the janitors on tv.