Victory at Target! After months of organizing and building public pressure on Target, the department store chain announced that Target broke its contract with Diversified Maintenance Systems LLC in the whole state of Tennessee and will audit the agency’s employment practices nationwide.
And Martha and Navor were paid $18,500! – the amount they say they were owed for work cleaning the Target department store in Brentwood.
“We won because we’re all in this together, we’re not alone. We can rely on the support of each other at Worker’s Dignity,” said Martha. “Together we can accomplish anything.”
Major Victory for Janitors in Tennessee
This is a tremendous victory for cleaning workers in Tennessee, and is a long time coming. Since Workers’ Dignity launched as a ragtag project in 2010, janitors cleaning Target, Home Depot, and other stores as employees of Diversified Maintenance have had to organize public pressure fights to recover wages allegedly stolen from the lowdown agency. In every situation, it required workers to bring community pressure through delegations and protests at big box stores. It seemed that only when brand reputations were on the line that justice was won.
“I’m happy because we have won a battle,” said Uzías, a Workers’ Dignity member. “From the beginning we knew that the fight would be long, but we also knew that we weren’t going to give up. We have learned and accomplished so much together. And along the way, more members kept joining us, and this motivated us to carry on.”
We are hopeful that is the beginning of a new day for Target, which in addition to breaking its Tennessee contract with Diversified, has launched a nationwide audit of the agency’s practices. Why is this important? The agency has contracts to clean 400 stores in 23 states! It’s time for Target to sign a responsible contractor agreement that allows for external monitoring of working conditions for contracted janitorial staff.