[Three weeks before the holidays, Twitter laid off its custodial
staff. We spoke to them on what they saw at HQ.]
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ELON MUSK THROUGH THE EYES OF TWITTER’S JANITORS  
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Teddy Ostrow
December 12, 2022
In These Times - Labor
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_ Three weeks before the holidays, Twitter laid off its custodial
staff. We spoke to them on what they saw at HQ. _

Protesting janitors march outside Twitter's San Francisco office,
December 5. , Photo courtesy of SEIU Local 87

 

Billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has captured
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headlines
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for its tumultuous effect on the company’s corporate staff and the
risks it poses to the platform’s future survival. But Musk’s
acquisition also has dire, albeit underreported, consequences for the
service staff who keep the blue bird humming. 

_In These Times _spoke to four janitors who say that all 20 custodial
workers at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters lost their jobs on
December 5 because Twitter’s new custodial contractor refused to
rehire them. The move comes less than two months after Musk, who
bought Twitter
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on October 27, fired several senior executives
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and later roughly 3,700 employees ranging from engineers to
communications workers to content moderators—half the company’s
staff
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November 4. 

In the absence
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of a communications department at Twitter, _In These Times_ sent
a request for comment to @TwitterComms, which did not respond.
Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters phone number and support number
were no longer active. Former Twitter staff were unresponsive when
asked for information on current press contacts. 

Unlike the earlier layoffs, Musk’s most recent firings target
unionized workers protected under a collective bargaining agreement.
Twitter’s laid-off janitorial staff are members of SEIU Local 87,
the custodians union which represents 5,000 janitors in the
Bay Area. 

The workers who spoke with _In These Times_ say the 20 janitors were
given a week’s warning that they would be terminated once their
contractor’s deal with Twitter ended on December 9, a move which in
effect also permanently fired nearly 30 other custodial workers
furloughed without pay earlier this year with promises of being
rehired once the office reopened. 

On December 5, janitors began
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an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike to protest the decision. The
same day, Twitter terminated
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the janitors’ contract outright instead of waiting for it to expire
four days later, immediately putting all janitors out of work.
They’ve been protesting outside the building ever since. 

"We are a union. That's why we got fired. Because they need a
non-union company."

According to Olga Miranda, SEIU Local 87’s president, many of the
janitors who lost their jobs are immigrants from countries including
Yemen, China, Mexico and El Salvador. The workers who spoke with _In
These Times_ all have families that depend solely on income from their
work at Twitter. Victor Linares Salazar, a Salvadoran worker who has
cleaned machines and kitchen utilities in the Twitter office for
almost ten years, is the sole earner for his wife and 4-year-old
daughter. ​“We all have families we have to support,” he says.

Despite the earlier rounds of layoffs at the company, custodial
workers told _In These Times_ that they were caught off guard when
Twitter laid them off because many have worked for the company for
years and have no other work to fall back on. ​“I’m extremely
shocked,” says Bilal, a lead janitor who worked at Twitter for ten
years (and requested only his first name be used for fear of further
retaliation if workers win their jobs back). Bilal, an immigrant from
Yemen, is the sole earner in his household, which includes his wife,
three kids and both his parents. ​“Twitter was my second home,”
he says.

Custodial staff are often on the front lines of workplace crises.
Twitter’s janitorial staff tell _In These Times_ that they were
required to risk their health by coming in during the first years of
the pandemic. Then came Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company. 

“The work changed, absolutely. Everything,” says Linares Salazar
of the change in ownership. Ever since Musk ordered Twitter employees
back into the office full-time and imposed longer hours, he adds,
janitors were unable to enter the offices to clean until 1:30 a.m. or
later, when other staff left; one janitor told the BBC
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the company, private security escorted him as he cleaned sections of
the office. 

Since Twitter adopted Musk's "extremely hardcore" work culture,
janitors say some conference rooms have been converted into makeshift
bedrooms or nurseries, with mattresses, blankets and bedside tables.

In mid-November, Musk instated an ​“extremely hardcore
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work culture at Twitter, demanding 80-hour work weeks and prompting
a wave of resignations. Janitors say that afterward, some conference
rooms in Twitter’s headquarters were converted into makeshift
bedrooms or nurseries
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with mattresses, blankets, pillows and bedside tables. ​“It’s
not a residential building. It’s an office building,” says Musa,
a Yemeni day porter lead who worked at Twitter for seven years and
requested only his first name be published for fear of further
retaliation. ​“We’re used to wiping the tables, picking up the
trash, vacuuming, but we are not used to doing bedroom things.” 

Musk has previously claimed
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he sleeps ​“on the floor” of his Tesla office ​“not because
I couldn’t go across the road and be at the hotel … [but] because
I wanted my circumstance to be worse than anyone else at the company
on purpose.” At Twitter, Musk’s personal converted sleeping
quarters resemble a luxuriously-furnished hotel room more than an
office, says Linares Salazar, who believes he found himself cleaning
the room on his last day on the job. 

“He’s not paying any hotel taxes or Airbnb taxes specific to San
Francisco,” Miranda jokes. Her criticism isn’t far off the mark;
a local radio station reported
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Francisco authorities were investigating whether Twitter was violating
the building’s legal code. In response, Musk tweeted
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that the city of San Francisco was ​“attack[ing] companies
providing beds for tired employees.”

The BBC reported that one worker was told by a member of Musk’s
team that eventually robots would take over their jobs
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janitorial workers _In These Times_ spoke to, they are not easily
replaceable by human employees, let alone robots. Musa says, ​“I
think [the new contractor’s] gonna miss a lot because we were in
the building for many years and we know everything.” He adds that
a task that might take the new workers an hour to do, would take him
and his coworkers only 20 minutes.

"Some people glorify [Elon Musk], but he's really strategically
stupid, and at the end of the day it will still be our members who
clean up his mess."

Janitors we spoke to believe that despite their importance to
Twitter’s functioning, Musk laid them off to bust the union.
​“We are a union. That’s why we got fired. Because they need
a non-union company,” Musa says. 

Musk has a history of apparent hostility against unions. At Tesla,
Musk laid off 280 unionized janitors and bus drivers
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the outset of the pandemic. A California judge in 2019
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and the National Labor Relations Board in 2021
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ruled that as Tesla CEO, Musk was guilty of a number of unfair labor
practices such as interrogating and firing union organizers, allowing
security to harass union pamphleteers, and posting anti-union tweets.
In August, the NLRB ruled that Tesla broke the law
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when it forbade factory workers from wearing clothing with pro-union
logos in the workplace. 

Musk has continued to face allegations of labor law violations at
Twitter. In addition to a series of
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suits brought by employees alleging termination without proper notice,
inadequate severance payments and retaliation against workers, San
Francisco City Attorney David Chiu’s office is looking into
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whether Musk is in violation of San Francisco law
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for refusing to rehire its janitorial staff. 

Twitter’s custodial staff are committed to not letting Musk get away
with it. Speaking to _In These Times _on a December 8 phone call
made almost inaudible by strong winds, workers say they were sticking
it out through the cold and rain to protest day and night outside
Twitter’s headquarters. Some say they’re tired, but they remain
committed to getting their jobs back. ​“In a union town like San
Francisco we can’t let a billionaire define what a quality of life
and being able to support your family means,” Miranda says.
​“Some people glorify [Elon Musk], but he’s really strategically
stupid, and at the end of the day it will still be our members who
clean up his mess.”

“He didn’t notice us when we were cleaning his offices, his pseudo
bedrooms and nurseries for kids,” she adds. ​“He should see our
faces now.” 

Teddy Ostrow [[link removed]] is
a journalist from Brooklyn covering labor and economics. He is
a financial correspondent for Deutsche Welle Business and his work
has appeared in _The Nation_, _The New Republic_, and elsewhere.
Follow him on Twitter @TeddyOstrow [[link removed]].

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* Twitter Custodial Staff; Elon Musk; Twitter Janitors Protest;
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