By Clifford L. Williams

The California Legislative Black Caucus (LBC) has urged leading corporate real estate industry owners to end the double standard that keeps predominately African American private security officers in poverty conditions.
   The LBC released a report entitled “Separate and Unequal: How Corporate Real Estate Can End Poverty Conditions in Building Security” last week during a press conference on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento.
    The study was prepared for the caucus by the Stand for Security Coalition of clergy, congregations and community leaders. Stand for Security is the largest movement of African American workers in history, working to lift families and communities out of poverty.
   “The corporate real estate industry is encouraging dead-end jobs and is not meeting their responsibility to the officers who protect their property nor to California businesses and the public who deserve stable, professional security forces,” said Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, chairman of the LBC.
    Security officers protect building tenants’ lives, as well as multibillion-dollar properties, yet they go home to the state’s most impoverished communities, from South Los Angeles to San Francisco’s Tenderloin, West Oakland and South Sacramento. Some security officers work more than full time and also pick up one or two more jobs just to make ends meet.
    A full-time security officer earns less than half the income necessary to live above poverty conditions as set forth by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Security officers would need to work nearly 100 hours a week to reach the self-sufficient standard set by the EPI.
   “Real estate corporations should commit to turn these deadend security job into good jobs for tens of thousands of predominately African American workers who comprise the security industry workforce,” said Assembly Majority Leader Karen Bass, vice-chair of the LBC. “The real estate industry’s double standard, when it comes to security, has a huge impact on our communities.”
    If corporate real estate leaders would agree to pay security officers the same wages and benefits as janitors, it would bring tens of millions of dollars back into the state’s economically challenged neighborhoods and lift thousands of security officers and their families out of poverty.
   “Security officers are the only workers in commercial real estate high-rise buildings without decent wages and access to quality, affordable health care,” said Faith Culbreath, president of SEIU SOULA (Service Employees International Union – Security Officers United in Los Angeles) Local 2006, whereas building engineers, window washers, parking attendants, janitors and others receive full employer-paid family health care, career ladders and wages to raise a family on. “Only the security workers — who are predominately African American — are being left behind.”