WeWork Cleaners Push For A Raise: "We Work Here Too"

Janitors at the co-working space launch a campaign for pay to match their union counterparts.

Mandel Ngan / Getty Images

Not long after a giant funding round made WeWork one of the world's most valuable startups, the people who clean its co-working spaces in New York are asking the company for a raise.

The 4-year old operator of shared office buildings has 15 locations in the city and was valued at $5 billion in a December funding round. But it pays its office cleaners less than half the industry standard, and provides no benefits, according to SEIU 32BJ, the local Service Employees International Union chapter that represents 70,000 New York workers.

The majority of New York janitors and cleaners belong to a union and make more than $23 an hour, plus family healthcare and retirement benefits, 32BJ said in a statement. WeWork did not immediately responded to requests for comment.

Janitors and their supporters plan to protest today at WeWork's Manhattan headquarters at 222 Broadway. In that same building, 32BJ said, other renters and owners hire cleaning contractors at the standard city-wide rate, while WeWork pays $11 an hour.

"WeWork says it aims 'to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living' but many of its cleaners are struggling to survive," the union said in a statement, adding that WeWork's cleaners and maintenance workers at are employed through a contractor whose staff are not unionized.

The protests come at a significant time for unionized cleaning staff in New York: this week marked the 25th anniversary of the Justice for Janitors campaign, which successfully unionized the city's cleaners. The SEIU has compared the successful drive to organize the city's janitors to the ongoing movement to raise fast food wages.