Security guards across California are demanding higher wages and better benefits. On Friday, several hundred security guards held a one-day strike in San Francisco.
San Francisco security guard Jakia Lane says she goes to work every day not knowing what danger she may face.
“They want us to protect them, but they don’t want to protect us,” she said. “It is in the back of my mind, but I also try to keep situational awareness, so that I’m aware because you never know what somebody’s gonna do to you. These people can stab you, shoot you, walk up to you and shoot you, anything.”
Lane and her fellow security guards say they don’t earn a living wage. Security guards staged a one-day strike in San Francisco today to demand better pay and benefits from the companies that employ them.
“Right now, we’re looking at average pay between $22 and $23 an hour and we really think those are wages that are not going to be able to sustain families,” SEIU Union President David Huerta said.
Huerta says guards deserve at least $30 an hour, better health and retirement benefits, and better training. But contract negotiations with their employers have stalled.
The union has been negotiating with security contractors including Allied Universal, Securitas, GardaWorld and others for months.
NBC Bay Area reached out to the security contractors and heard back from just one of them. Allied Universal says they’re focused on reaching an agreement saying, “We have made substantial progress in negotiations as part of our commitment to finding common ground.”
Meanwhile, Lane says she’s juggling her guard duties with a second job as a hair stylist just to survive. She says she and her colleagues deserve better.
The union says contract talks will resume on Tuesday. But they say if a deal isn’t reached, the picketing that took place in San Francisco could become widespread.
“We could see strikes as early as next week in Los Angeles some of the biggest economic corridors, we could see strikes in the Silicon Valley. We could see strikes in the east Bay and most certainly here in San Francisco,” Huerta said.
