Union members from 32BJ SEIU gathered outside One Monarch Place in Springfield to protest the likely displacement of 14 longtime union cleaners by a nonunion cleaning contractor.
Reminder Publishing photo by Ryan Feyre
SPRINGFIELD — A crew of 14 longtime union cleaners at One Monarch Place are worried that a new cleaning contractor will upend their livelihoods when the new company officially arrives on May 1.
In early April, Monarch Place owner Paul Picknelly announced that an East Longmeadow nonunion cleaning company called Environment Control Connecticut Valley Inc. will replace One Monarch’s current Connecticut-based company, Performance Environmental.
In a phone interview, Picknelly said the change is necessary because the current vendor was not providing “proper service.”
“We’ve had multiple conversations and multiple meetings with the vendor about stepping up their game, about making this building cleaner than what it was,” Picknelly said. “And unfortunately, they didn’t deliver, which forced us to go to seek out another vendor.”
One Monarch is a 400,000-square-foot Class A office building in the heart of downtown that houses the Sheraton Hotel with 30,000 square feet of meeting space, 325 guest rooms, an upscale restaurant and a sports lounge.
The 14 cleaners that maintain the building day and night, as well as the union that represents them, fear that Picknelly’s decision to switch cleaning companies will jeopardize job security and erode local employment standards due to Environmental Control’s nebulous history and status as a nonunion company.
On April 23, the One Monarch cleaners gathered with Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ and Ward 3 City Councilor Melvin Edwards to protest this decision by Picknelly and demand that the cleaners maintain their jobs and benefits.
“At the beginning of the month, we got notice that we’re being replaced by a new company that is not a responsible contractor,” said Kevin Brown, 32BJ SEIU executive vice president. “[They] don’t pay area standard wages and benefits.”
According to its website, 32BJ SEIU primarily represents cleaners, property maintenance workers, doormen, security officers, airport workers, window cleaners, building engineers and school and food service workers.
In an interview with Reminder Publishing, Brown said the union has an agreement with 60 different companies in Massachusetts who all pay their wages and benefits, but Environment Control Connecticut Valley is not one of them.
Brown said the union had asked to meet with Picknelly to discuss other options, but the owner refused. He also sent a letter to the new contractor asking for his members to be hired, but the contractor never initially responded.
Finally, the night before the protest, Brown said the new contractor told them that the new cleaners can reapply for their jobs.
One of the cleaners likely displaced by Picknelly’s decision is Jeanne Hamel, a One Monarch worker of 25 years. Hamel, who is 78, said she
works part time five nights a week from 5-8 p.m. and relies on the money to pay her bills.
She said she never expected to get the notice that she could lose her job.
“I was shocked,” Hamel said. “No warning, no nothing.”
Brown said that in 2020, Environment Control replaced 10 unionized cleaners at The Boat Building, an iconic Hartford high-rise housing the Nassau Financial Group. The company reduced area wages, which were about $17 or $18 an hour, to minimum wages with no benefits.
“We anticipate they’re trying to do the same thing here,” said Brown.
He added that many of the cleaners at One Monarch Place are immigrant workers trying to improve their lives, and this job has so far allowed them to do that.
However, union members fear the workers’ progress as citizens could be reversed because of the change in cleaning companies.
“Minimum wage jobs are plenty, but a job that pays a decent wage and health care and legal and training benefits and a retirement is not so common,” Brown said. “This is currently a good job, and we want that to be preserved.”
