Posted on 03/01/2006 4:18:34 PM PST by bd476
CORAL GABLES -- For four years, Zoila Mursuli toiled in the shadows, scrubbing toilets, sweeping floors and emptying trash on the graveyard shift at the University of Miami.
Her job came with no health benefits and paid just $6.70 an hour, which ranks among the lowest wages for university janitors in the nation. Then last week, she was fired after talking to the Orlando Sentinel about her efforts to organize a strike among her fellow UM maintenance workers. Late Tuesday, her efforts paid off: Her night-shift co-workers walked off their jobs in an escalating strike about alleged unfair labor practices.
"They were targeting me because of my activities," said Mursuli, 51. "They want me to go away, but it's only going to make all of us stronger."
Similar labor disputes have played out on college campuses across the nation, but anger at one of the perceived villains, university President Donna Shalala, sets this one apart.
After all, Shalala, who was President Clinton's secretary for Health and Human Services, has spent much of her public career as an advocate for the poor. When she left the administration in 2001, she lamented her failure to ensure every worker in America had affordable health coverage.
Now, UM's maintenance staff, many of them immigrants from Cuba and Haiti... are demanding that Shalala open university coffers to take care of the 485 people who keep it clean and manicured.
…Shalala …just raised … $1 billion … at UM.
She … was ... in an … article in the New York Times this month. … discusses her 9,000-square-foot presidential residence on the waterfront -- where her dog has the choice of four beds, and … her 29-foot motorboat...
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
Related story:
Janitors Strike Night Shift at UM Coral Gables Campus; (Univ of Miami Pres Donna Shalala)
Sic 'em Zoila! I worked for a year (between college and grad school) as a night-time janitor in a high school (along with substitute teaching during the day). It was hard work, but you could look at the room you had worked on and say, yep, that looks A LOT BETTER when you were done. I hope this lady give Donna Shalala fits!
Case solved. She has to form a group to figure out that they are under paying and not providing any benefits.
She should ask her dogs. Clearly a card carrying member of the DNC.
They are direct employees of the university, not contractors?
In private business, most of the janitorial services are outsurced.
Are they in this country legally?
"They have long contended that what university contractors pay their employees is the contractors' business and should be based on the prevailing market rate, which in an immigrant community such as Miami-Dade's is often low."
I knew I would find this. She does NOT work for the University, she works AT the University. She is employed by a private company, contracted to perform those services. Why is she giving the University such a hard time? She does not even work for them.
Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Clinton-crony bashing, though.
Good catch. If they get what they want, that company will never get the bid next time. Who are they going to sue when they are all laid off?
L98Fiero wrote: "...Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Clinton-crony bashing, though."
Huh? Where, and what misstated facts are you referring to?
Just for future reference, pro-Clinton threads are not usually found around these parts.
I thought that name sounded familiar...
"Just for future reference, pro-Clinton threads are not usually found around these parts."
LOL! Wonder why?
My apologies. The comment wasn't directed at you personally. A couple early posters on this thread automatically took the other side since the president of the university is a Clinton-crony, hoping the employee stuck it to her or some such.
The facts reveal that the "employee" didn't even work for the university but a privater contractor, so wishing her well in a labor suit and union organizing against the university seems wrong. A couple of FReepers either didn't read or ignored that part.
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