Archived Workers Cleaning Target Stores Threaten to Strike

[commiecorvus]

They don't work for Spot directly, rather for the contractors that do the stores in Minnesota.

The workers are employed by three janitorial contractors–Prestige Maintenance USA, Diversified Maintenance Systems, and Carlson Building Maintenance–and work inside Target facilities in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The S threat follows a series of OSHA charges alleging that employees of those companies were denied proper safety training and locked inside of Target stores, and National Labor Relations Board charges alleging that they were retaliated against for organizing.
The charges and the S threat were spearheaded by the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL), a Twin Cities labor group which, as The Nation reported, has been organizing retail cleaning workers for two years.

It looks like the company that cleans Spot's main office building is also facing a S.

So poor training, dangerous conditions and bad pay are endemic.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/173051/workers-cleaning-target-stores-threaten-S

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

our cleaning crew is bad. on sunday, there was only 1 guy for the whole store.

 

[FlowMonkey]

I will say atleast in our store a big part of the problem is that all the employees are hispanic (very limited english) and don't understand us when we try to tell them how to do something (not being racist) we try to tell them to clean areas we aren't working in, 5 minutes later here comes the scrubber ramming our boxes/carts (one cart almost hit me because I was bend down filling a bottom shelf behind it) out of the way, we tell them the grocery main needs to be dry after waxing by 4AM so vendors can work their product, 3:55 AM here lets throw another coat on! we have one of those 3 companies listed working in our store and ever since they switched they haven't once finished the entire store in a single night

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Based on watching cleaning crew, they're not told to clean the floor every night by scrubber.

 

[kingpin003]

We were told by DFM that they are to use the scrubber only one night a week and it's entirely their choice so we have no say in when that is.

 

[Barcode]

My store had these guys, and they're completely awful... My sft was riding their ass 24/7 to get stuff done right.

 

[pfreshdude]

Maybe we can get better cleaning crews. My SFT and I talk alot and he has mentioned they do a horrible job and way worse than the crews we had even 2 years ago.

 

[FlowMonkey]

the crew we lost when these guys took over was awesome (first awesome one I'd seen) if the scrubber was broken they took mops and did the job almost as fast as with the scrubber (one on the main one on the back main) none of them stayed on with the new crew even though they were offered positons (I still keep in touch with one of the old ones, he said their company was undercut by 40% by this new company which speaks volumes to you get what you pay for)

 

[RhettB]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this. Wal Mart does it. Some WM's are clean, others not. It depends on who is doing it.

 

[StaticSun]

My cleaning crew almost burned down the building.

Twice.

The week before Black Friday.

 

[Dr Laytex]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

 

[RhettB]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

And you get what you pay for too. A team of 4 workers who are expected to get the job done in 4 hours. Hence why the floors are only done in a rotation. Not too long ago a cleaning crew TM did not quite make a turn... took out an endcap of liquor with the buffer. AP was not happy.

 

[commiecorvus]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

And you have plausible dependability about breaks, pay, training, and green cards.

 

[redeye58]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

And spot is all about doing things on the cheap.

 

[RhettB]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

And you have plausible dependability about breaks, pay, training, and green cards.

At least with an internal crew the INS will not be involved.

 

[TargetOldTimer]

We have a great cleaning crew now. All speak english, but that might be because several men on the last crew were fired because they were working using female's social security numbers...........

 

[dek067]

all of our cleaning crew team members we've had over the last three months have been arrested for various things. we see them in the paper a couple of weeks after wondering where they went to. the new guys have been there for three weeks now; it's a new record. my fave was the little guy eating stuff out of the food ave coolers. he would just get whatever he wanted from the stock/coolers and sit in the back and eat. it took them a while to figure out what was going on.

 

[FlowMonkey]

well that's better than the one we had with no teeth eating pizza out of the big garbage bins they push around

 

[PullMeBackIn]

Why can't Target just have it's own internal cleaning team? I've never been to get an substantive answer to this.

Much cheaper to contract it out.

And you have plausible dependability about breaks, pay, training, and green cards.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.

As soon as this becomes a bigger story that'll be their defense as well.