There's mixed news on the labor front.  Ensuring labor survives and thrives is number seven on the list of rules to build a progressive America.  And on that note, SEIU janitors won another impressive victory.

Simon Property Group said it signed an "agreement in principle" with the Service Employees International Union aimed at improving work standards for more than 3,000 subcontracted janitors at Simon shopping centers across the country, including over 150 in the Indianapolis area.

"We want to ensure all our properties have labor peace. We want to make sure people are treated fairly," John Rulli, chief operating officer of operating properties for Simon, said today.

A delegation of Indianapolis clergy, working on behalf of the service union, met with Rulli this morning at Simon's Indianapolis headquarters to thank Simon for signing the agreement.

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Other local companies that have agreed are health benefits company WellPoint Inc., real estate developers Duke Realty Corp. and Kite Realty Group, and drug maker Eli Lilly and Co., according to Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago group that is organizing clergy support of the effort.

The alliance between local clergy and working class union members is an intriguing and important piece of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, the United Steelworkers are still fighting their horrible mediocre marketing-driven CEO Robert Keegan to ensure that he follows through on his company's promises.  A few years ago, workers took wage and benefits freezes to help Goodyear through financial hardship.  In return, apparently, Keegan broke his promises to employees and is now cutting job and health benefit cuts after the company returned to profitability.  Rather than negotiating, of course, Keegan borrowed a billion from the capital markets to see his company through the strike, throwing in a bonus to his executives even as he ruined labor relations and put his company on a fiscally unsound footing.  This is of course typical Republican management by greed and sacrificing other peoples' families.  Anyway, this time it turns out that Keegan is also hurting the troops.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday urged Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and the United Steelworkers to work out a deal for about 200 striking workers in Topeka to return to work making tires for the military.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said the military needs the tires for its Humvees, the workhorse vehicle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"My recommendation is to immediately allow the 200 United Steelworkers at the Goodyear facility in Topeka, Kan., to return to work," Hunter said in a letter to Goodyear and the union, which represents Goodyear employees.

"Production levels have been reduced by approximately 35 percent, creating a shortage within the military," Hunter said.

About 12,000 Goodyear workers in the United States and Canada went on strike Oct. 5. In September, the company received a $17.7 million contract for Humvee tires.

The union in November told the company it would return to negotiations only if the Akron, Ohio-based company was willing to drop plans to close plants and cut health care.

The company's Topeka facility is its only plant producing Humvee tires and is accustomed to working around the clock with 1,600 employees. Nearly 1,400 have been on strike.

Goodyear, the world's third largest tire maker, has been using salaried workers and temporary hires to produce the tires in Topeka. Goodyear spokesman Ed Markey declined to confirm production levels since the strike.

That's Duncan Hunter, Republican, who is calling on Goodyear to resume production of tires.  Let's see what happens in a Democratic Congress, and pressure on greedy monsters like Keegan who like to commit economic violence to thousands of working class families during the holiday and jeopardize troop lives increases.  Oh, and by the way, strikes are immensely difficult and stressful periods for families, made doubly so by the holidays.  Join in their day of action if you can.

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This is a guest-post from Stephen Lerner.  Lerner is Director of SEIU's Property Services Division. With 1.8 million members, SEIU is the largest and fastest-growing union in America.

Today, 5,300 of Houston's janitors work part-time, are paid just $20 a day and get no health insurance for scrubbing the floors and cleaning the toilets of some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Within 24 months, the workers' income will double and they will have secure, affordable health insurance. Why? They joined together, formed a union, and fought like hell to win a new labor contract that guarantees those things and more.

The janitors' seemingly unlikely victory teaches some important lessons because it tears down some conventional wisdom about what it is going to take to change our country.

1) Houston janitors are a beacon of hope for all of us. The janitors' victory proves that just because you live in the South where workers' wages have been kept low and rights have been stifled by anti-union corporations helped by anti-worker politicians, doesn't mean you can't have the same shot at the American Dream as workers everywhere.  These janitors had everything working against them:  They are low-wage, part-time workers, the majority of them are recent immigrants, and they were up against some of the richest corporations in the world, like the big oil company Chevron.  The conventional wisdom says any one of these obstacles by itself would have made victory impossible.  But they won, because they had a strategy.  Backed by the right strategy, workers can win - in the South, or anywhere.

2) The high number of uninsured is indefensible. From the beginning, affordable health care was a critical goal for the janitors.  A contract without health care would have been unacceptable.  And the janitors were not alone - in the very first week of the strike, Houston's mayor publicly argued that these workers must have health insurance.  He understood - as more politicians are beginning to understand - that the cost of the uninsured is passed on to all of us, and it's a problem that needs to be addressed by covering more people, not less.  Ultimately Houston's largest corporations, whether they agreed or not, were not willing to have that debate.

3) The need for better jobs crosses racial lines. Too often, African Americans and Latino immigrants have been pitted against one another, fighting over bad jobs that don't pay enough and don't offer health care.  But in the Houston strike, "black and brown" national leaders united to support this largely immigrant workforce.  Dozens of African American leaders - many of them veterans of the civil rights movement of the 1960s - lent their support to help these mostly Latina women win better jobs.  And it's no coincidence that many of the same non-violent, civil disobedience tactics that helped spur the civil rights movement were also effective in Houston.

4) Globalization can be a tool for workers to raise their living standards. It used to be that to win a union contract, workers just had to join with co-workers in their building or factory. Not any more. Like manufacturing did before, the service industry is nationalizing and globalizing. Houston janitors were able to draw on the strength of SEIU janitors from throughout the US who work for the same employers in buildings owned by the same multinational real estate landlords. Globally, union workers in Mexico City, Moscow, London, and Berlin held actions in support of Houston strikers. The workers get it - they know that if their multinational employers are holding wages down in Houston, their own living standards are on the line. With the service economy going global, janitors and other workers have the opportunity to turn globalization on its head and use it as a tool to improve their lives.

So what does this all mean?  Working people in this country are hungry for change.  We saw it in the election, when voters, 80% of whom listed economic issues as "extremely" or "very important," elected a new Congress that campaigned explicitly on issues of raising the minimum wage and health care.  We definitely saw it in the thousands of Houston janitors willing to risk everything to change their lives and win a better future for themselves and their families.  

And with the Houston janitors' victory, we see that unions, with the right strategies, can be a vehicle to unite workers and their allies in a real movement for economic and social justice.

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Andy Stern sent out an all SEIU email this morning.  Here are the first two paragraphs.

More than 5,300 Houston janitors have reached a solid tentative agreement with their employers that will put workers and their families on the road to a better future and pave the way for workers throughout the country to unite to improve their lives. Details of the agreement are forthcoming, however the janitors' contract will lift workers and their families out of deep poverty and ensure access to quality, affordable health care.

The agreement was reached following an intense four-week long strike waged by nearly two thousand janitors that received tremendous local, national, and international support from SEIU janitors, union members across multiple industries and divisions, some of the nation's top elected and civil rights' leaders, and faith, labor, and community leaders in Houston and around the country.

The movement to restore balance in our economic system is picking up steam.  Jim Webb's Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal is not an aberration, there is a movement to redress inequities in America.  It's a popular movement, and my advice to politicians is that they should get on board.

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Apparently I couldn't have been more wrong (a specialty of mine) in my previous comments blaming Mayor White for the police actions during the strike. The strike was settled today and he's being credited with behind the scenes arm twisting that brought the strike to a happy ending. Well done Mayor White.

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The Houston janitors continue to get attacked viciously, this time through legal means, for standing up for their economic welfare.  At first they were trampled by horses, then they were arrested and mistreated in jail, and now bail is set at a ridiculous level so the 44 people arrested can't pay it.

In an unprecedented transparent attempt to severely limit the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech of low-wage Houston janitors and their supporters, a Harris County District Attorney has set an extraordinarily high bond of $888,888 cash for each of the 44 peaceful protestors arrested last night. Houston janitors and their supporters, many of them janitors from other cities, were participating in an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting in the intersection of Travis at Capitol when they were arrested in downtown Houston Thursday night. They were challenging Houston's real estate industry to settle the janitors' strike and agree on a contract that provides the 5,300 janitors in Houston with higher wages and affordable health insurance.

The combined $39.1 million bond for the workers and their supporters is far and above the normal amount of bail set for people accused of even violent crimes in Harris County. While each of the non-violent protestors is being held on $888,888 bail ...

   * For a woman charged with beating her granddaughter to death with a
      sledgehammer, bail was set at $100,000;

   * For a woman accused of disconnecting her quadriplegic mother's breathing
      machine, bail was set at $30,000;

   * For a man charged with murder for stabbing another man to death in a bar
      brawl, bail was set at $30,000;

   * For janitors and protesters charged with Class B misdemeanors for past
      non-violent protests, standard bail has been set at $500 each.

More than 5,300 Houston janitors are paid $20 a day with no health insurance, among the lowest wages and benefits of any workers in America.

Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry Waxman,  John Lewis, Al Green, Senator Ted Kennedy, Reverend James Lawson, Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis, Texas State House Representative Garnet Coleman, Houston City Council Member Ada Edwards, Reverend James Orange, and Reverend William Lawson have all spoken out.

If I were Chevron, Exxon, and Shell Oil - all of whom make billions and any of whom could end the strike - I would be nervous that Henry Waxman is asking you to intervene.  A few million dollars in extra salary and health care benefits for the people cleaning your offices is a really small price to pay to prevent Waxman from really scrutinizing your business practices.  He plays hardball, he dislikes corruption, and he's pushing global warming legislation.

Update: Sean-Paul says that bail has been reduced by a magistrate to $1000 apiece.

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