Clergy Call on Procter & Gamble To Offer Good Healthcare To Low-Wage Workers

Members of the clergy are calling on Procter & Gamble -- Cincinnati's largest and most powerful corporation -- to join the historic effort to lift families out of poverty and stabilize the city's poorest neighborhoods. More than 1,200 janitors have won higher wages, more work hours, and health insurance in their first-ever city-wide union contract, hailed as a model for low-wage workers throughout the region.

"It is imperative that P&G reach out and help the least among us in the community," says Rev. Gregory Chandler, president of the AMOS Project. "It is only just, right, and moral that P&G use their means to ensure that no janitor is trapped in working poverty."

Janitors and clergy are launching a national campaign to reach out to P&G customers -- many of whom are also in working families struggling to make ends meet -- and urge the consumer giant to provide the workers who maintain their corporate headquarters and research facilities in Cincinnati with the same opportunities as other area janitors. Consumers will be able to take part in a national letter-writing campaign through a website set up by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Clergy leaders recently delivered a letter to Procter & Gamble executives that called on the company to address this issue, but P&G has failed to respond, the clergy says. The delegation included Bishop Dwight Wilkins, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, Rev. Rousseau O'Neal, president of the Faith Community Alliance, and Rev. Paula Jackson, Interfaith Worker Justice.

"We came together to make Cincinnati a better city to live in," says Cincinnati janitor Lauressie "Dee Dee" Tillman. "Procter & Gamble janitors shouldn't be left behind."

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