BUFFALO, N.Y. — Expect to hear more from the men and women who work as custodians in Buffalo Public Schools.
They have been working under a contract dated 2010.
There are more than 200 unionized Buffalo Public School custodians who have been working without a contract for 10 years.
Local 17 Members have been working under the same contract for over 10 years without a raise. The bump in pay that has been received was because of a hike in the minimum wage.
One worker said, "A lot of us have had to sacrifice our social lives to work 80 hours a week more overtime than we work straight hours to compensate for our lack of a reasonable hourly wage."
Local 17 represents custodial engineers, custodial HVAC workers, helpers, and elevator workers.
"These are the people that shovel the sidewalks, they mop the floors, plunge the toilets, they clean up after the students when they get sick, they mow the grass, rake the leaves, salt the steps," said a Local 17 business manager Gar Swain.
"These are quite frankly essential workers even when schools went remote learning the teachers were still in buildings."
Swain said the ball is in the court of the Buffalo School Board.
He hopes interim superintendent Dr. Tonja Williams gets involved so the school board can come to terms with the engineers. No one from the district was available for comment on Monday.
Swain believes the school board may want to change the relationship they have with the Buffalo School Engineers association, he said, "Those are the people that I have a contract with so until they get a new contract with the school board there is going to be no new money for me to negotiate a contract with them for the custodians."