Beginning in August 2007, FRESC’s Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice provided faith and community support for workers at the Downtown Denver Hyatt Hotel who were trying to win their very first union contract before the arrival of delegates for the Democratic National Convention.  Five clergy sat in on a bargaining session and advocated with the Union for a reduction in the number of rooms that housekeeping staff were required to clean.  Many of these workers are women and were experiencing carpal tunnel syndrome and other physical maladies due to excessive workload.  Now, instead of each worker having to clean 32 rooms a day, they only have to clean 16.  Workers also won better wages and health care.

IWJ-CO is supporting various worker justice campaigns including:

• Low-wage food service employees at the University of Denver in their struggle to form a union for better wages and health care (see video below).
• Pay Day Lending Reform in Colorado. 
  
• A Stop Wage Theft Campaign with El Centro Humanitario Para Los Trabajadores, Denver’s Day Laborer Center.  For more info on the national problem of Wage Theft, please click here.

April, 2009: IWJ-CO provided direct clergy support to help win a Worker Retention executive order covering city contracts in Denver.  The Mayor’s executive order gives workers like janitors and window cleaners an opportunity to keep their jobs when a city contract changes hands….thus preventing unnecessary lay-offs and retaining well-trained employees who do quality service work for the public.  

Feb/March/April 2009:  IWJ-CO’s clergy leadership team engaged in advocacy work to help members of ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) Local 1001 win a binding arbitration ruling from the Department of Labor to assist them in reaching a fair contract for RTD’s bus drivers.  

Fall, 2008:  IWJ-CO organized 55 clergy from across the State to publically oppose and defeat two anti-labor Ballot Amendments in Colorado: Amendment 47 (a right-to-work-for less bill) and Amendment 49 (paycheck deception).  Amendment 47 would have limited the ability of workers like firefighters and nurses to work as a group in order to advocate together for better working conditions, while Amendment 49 would have weakened the ability of union workers to fund their own organizations.  Colorado voters defeated both of these anti-worker amendments in the November 2008 election!

In the summer of 2008, Interfaith Worker Justice organized 30 Colorado clergy and pastors to sign onto a letter supporting the Justice for Janitors campaign in Denver.

Thanks to help and support from the community, including the witness of people from various religious traditions, Denver-area union janitors successfully negotiated a new four-year master cleaning contract—the first contract to cover the entire Denver Metro area—which includes virtually every office building in the region. The agreement is mutually beneficial to both janitors and cleaning contractors, and is also good for tenants and building owners because it adds new incentives for long-term employment (which, in turn, increases the quality of service).

"There were a lot of us who started crying when we heard about the contract,” said Rita Jaramillo, an SEIU member and janitor for 12 years in Downtown Denver. “Wages are going up, and there will be 500 more people eligible for family health care. This is really going to change people’s lives—people who used to have to make impossible choices between food and medicine.”

Highlights of the new contract include:

Average annual salary increase of 4%.
Workers won across-the-board salary increases that average 4% throughout the Denver Metro area. A worker in downtown Denver making $10 per hour (after 18 months on the job) will end up making $11.60 at the end of the contract.

Expansion of family health care benefits at NO COST to workers.
There are currently 220 workers eligible for full family health care benefits (only full-time workers in downtown Denver were eligible under the current contract). At the end of the new contract, 500 more workers will be eligible for full family health care benefits in Cherry Creek, Aurora and the Denver Tech Center .