They risked their lives to clean New York offices. Now they may strike.

NEW YORK – Ms Danuta Klimas, an office cleaner, went back to work in lower Manhattan days after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, as toxic dust from ground zero hung in the air. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer years later.

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she was working in the same building, even after discovering that she had interstitial lung disease.

But at least, she said, her medical bills were covered.

For decades, her employer has offered healthcare plans with no employee premiums or deductibles, saving her thousands of dollars a year.

Now Ms Klimas, 66, along with thousands of others who mopped, dusted and scrubbed

1,300 buildings during the worst of the pandemic,

are sending a message as their bosses signal that they may cut back on healthcare contributions: Don’t mess with our benefits.

“We will fight for this health insurance. It’s not negotiable,” Ms Klimas said. “We deserve it.”

The showdown pits a group of essential workers, who toiled at great personal risk while most white-collar workers remained safer at home, against real estate firms that are struggling with the highest ever office vacancy rates and plummeting property values.

The cleaners are part of 32BJ SEIU, a union that represents 20,000 commercial maintenance workers whose four-year contract with landlords and cleaning companies is set to expire on Dec 31.

The fight could be a harbinger for both the future of the office market, and one of the many working-class industries reliant on its recovery.

On Thursday, union members gathered at demonstrations in midtown Manhattan and at Zuccotti Park downtown, to kick off what many believe will be a protracted fight – and perhaps their first strike in 27 years.

Chants filled the air as they rallied for a new contract: “If we don’t get it? Shut it down!”

In addition to protecting their health coverage, the workers are seeking wage increases, retirement fund improvements and other benefits.

“This is really about the future of working people in this city,” said Mr Manny Pastreich, the union president, who expects that real estate companies will target employee health benefits because of the moribund office sector.

A third of the union’s office cleaners were temporarily laid off from April to June 2020, when offices were mostly closed, and about 10 per cent of the jobs, or 2,000 jobs total, never came back, in part because of the persistence of remote work.

At least 40 union members who worked in commercial buildings died of Covid-19, he said.

The Realty Advisory Board on Labour Relations, the body that bargains on behalf of real estate owners, managers and cleaning companies, has already signalled that cutbacks are coming.

“Our current contracts are not sustainable,” Mr Howard Rothschild, the board president, said, noting that the cleaners are among a small minority of American workers who do not pay an annual premium for employer healthcare.

Mr Rothschild also noted that the city’s office maintenance workers were among the highest paid in the country, with a typical wage of US$29 (S$39.50) an hour, or about US$61,300 a year.

The city’s median household income is about US$75,000.

The union contract covers workers – mostly cleaners, but also some porters and repair people – at a wide range of buildings, including office towers in Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center, tourist attractions like the Empire State Building, universities, transit hubs and The New York Times headquarters.

Healthcare costs have surged in 2023 for both employers and workers, thanks to inflation and a rebound in medical service demand, according to a recent survey by KFF, a non-profit health policy research group.

Workers paid an average US$6,575 in 2023 for a family premium, an increase of nearly US$500 since 2022.

Nearly a quarter of employers surveyed said they would require workers to pay more in the next two years because of their own rising costs, said Mr Matthew Rae, a co-author of the report.

Mr Godwin Dillon, 42, an office cleaner and single father who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn, felt those costs acutely when he was temporarily laid off in 2020 from his job at 85 Broad Street (Tenants at the building include WeWork, the office space company that filed for bankruptcy last week.)

Mr Dillon, who is diabetic, typically pays US$20 for 90 days of insulin, but when his employer-paid healthcare expired near the end of his unemployment, he said he had to pay US$600 for a month’s supply.

And, while he has since returned to work, his rent, $1,700 at the start of the pandemic, has climbed to US$2,100 a month, a 23 per cent jump in three years.

“You can’t do it off a single income any more,” he said.

The negotiations begin at one of the worst times for the commercial real estate industry.

In Manhattan, 22 per cent of office space was vacant in the last quarter, or about twice the rate of empty space before the pandemic, said Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of finance at Columbia Business School who tracks the commercial market.

Coupled with high interest rates and falling rents, real estate firms are “in the most difficult environment for offices that has maybe ever existed”, he said, estimating that New York City offices were worth 42 per cent less than before the pandemic.

“These companies are struggling for survival,” he said. “And when you’re in survival mode, there isn’t a whole lot to give.”

The union has said its commercial building maintenance division is prepared to go on strike.

It would be the first time since the winter of 1996, when the group picketed outside of office buildings for a month in the cold and snow to demand higher pay.

Building managers hired temporary workers, but dysfunction was rampant: Garbage piled up, bathrooms were filthy and some white-collar workers began bringing their own toilet paper to the office.

The office market has since changed dramatically.

With most offices already engaged in hybrid work schedules, disruptions to building services could spur more employees to work remotely, muting the strike’s effect, said Prof Van Nieuwerburgh.

But he said a strike could also hurt commercial landlords, who are desperate to bring people back to the office.

The strike would be most visible in Manhattan, but its effects might be more strongly felt in the other boroughs, where the majority of workers live, including 4,600 in the Bronx and 4,500 in Queens, according to union figures.

Ms Oralia Mendoza, 50, who lives in East Elmhurst, Queens, has been working full-time as a cleaner in a Manhattan office building for five years.

Ms Mendoza, originally from Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, was previously paid US$10 an hour, plus tips, as a server in a Queens restaurant.

The cleaner job, which pays around US$29 an hour, has been a huge boon, she said, but added healthcare costs would make it hard for her and her 15-year-old daughter to afford their $2,450 a month apartment.

“The prices don’t go much lower than what we are paying,” she said in Spanish. “We would be forced to look for a second job or move.”

For Ms Ena Softley, 66, who has been a New York City office cleaner for 37 years, there is also a moral imperative.

Early in the pandemic, she said she became gravely ill with Covid-19 while on the job, and was out of work from March to May 2020. Her doctor warned her not to return.

But she had to come back, not least of all to keep her medical coverage.

She credits her healthcare plan for getting her access to quality medicine and doctors, with no major out-of-pocket expenses. She needs regular check-ups for lingering health issues.

“We are begging America and New York to see – we are in service jobs, we work so hard, we sacrificed our lives when Covid-19 came,” she said. “But we do it because we choose to serve, and we love our jobs.”

“If they roll back healthcare,” she said, “it would be devastating.” NYTIMES