Ready to strike, University of Miami’s custodians demand higher wages

Shares LeFevre grimaced as she described her near weekly experiences cleaning up college students’ ill-placed bodily excretions. Beads of sweat formed on her nose as she shouted about the physically – and sometimes emotionally – taxing nature of her custodial job at the University of Miami, struggling to be heard over the cacophony of a crowing mariachi band and the Metrorail’s occasional thunder from overhead.

She’s a member of the 32BJ SEIU union – which represents 185,000 property service workers nationwide, including more than 500 groundskeepers, custodians, landscapers and pest control workers contracted by the University of Miami through their employer, janitorial firm ABM.

Many of those workers marched down Ponce de Leon on Monday, chanting, singing and waving signs after it was announced that 364 of the chapter’s 516 members voted unanimously among those present to authorize a strike if contract negotiations with ABM stall later this week.

The members —who made headlines in 2006 when a number of custodians went on a 17-day hunger strike during their successful push to unionize— are seeking higher pay. Their current starting hourly rate is $14.25. According to 32BJ Vice President and Florida Director Helene O’Brien, ABM’s standing offer includes annual hourly wage increases of $0.50 over the course of the four-year contract

Given the local cost of living, that won’t cut it, she says.

In a statement, the university noted that ABM is a contractor for the university and stated that it is “hopeful the two sides reach an amicable agreement.”

“We just want a fair [wage] adjustment, so we can feed ourselves,” said union member Elsa Rodriguez at Monday’s march. In her hand, she held a pink rose.

Her fellow union members bestowed the flower upon her at the day’s open, honoring her participation in the two-plus week hunger strike that paved the way for the University’s custodial staff to unionize nearly two decades ago.

Rodriguez, 70, lost more than 20 pounds over those 17 days. “I’ll do it again if I have to,” affirmed the grandmother of five.

And while she’s hoping the union wins a pay increase, what Rodriguez really wants is to be able to retire from her physically demanding custodial job. She estimates she’s at least two or three years out from being able to do so. If she were to stop working now, Rodriguez says she “couldn’t afford to eat.”

LeFevre, 30, finds her finances similarly stretched. She’s worked for ABM for a decade and makes $14.35 an hour. Across four 40-hour work weeks, that’s just under $2,300 a month. After spending over half of that on rent for her shared apartment, she’s left with just over $1,000 a month, which she uses to support herself and, when she can, her mother, who lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Sometimes, she says, “I have to choose between myself and my mother.” LeFevre scrapes together just enough each month to pay for groceries and a class at Miami-Dade College, where she hopes to gain the qualifications needed to become a medical biller. Not once this year has she felt financially able enough to so much as meet friends for a drink. LeFevre says she’s often behind on rent or utilities. Struggling to keep up with rising costs, she sometimes forgoes buying groceries for herself.

In the last five years alone, the cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Miami-Dade County has grown by nearly 48%, according to estimates from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Roughly 60% of metro Miami residents now spend at least 30% of their income on housing, while three in ten spend at least half, making Miamians the most cost-burdened urbanites in America.

On top of that, grocery prices have jumped 25% since 2020, while transportation costs ballooned by 66% between 2021 and 2023 alone – according to USDA and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, leaving many locals with little to no disposable income.

More than half of Miamians, LeFevre included, now live paycheck to paycheck, squeezed by spiralling prices and wages that haven’t kept pace.

She’d still be under financial pressure with an extra dollar or two per hour, but LeFevre says such a wage hike would be the bare minimum she’d need to get by in an increasingly expensive Miami.

“You just can’t [live here] on $14 an hour,” she remarked.

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