Montgomery County Council member Hans Riemer will introduce legislation Tuesday that would require employers of janitors and cleaners in the county’s biggest office buildings to provide those workers with enough hours of work to qualify for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Riemer, along with council co-sponsors Nancy Navarro, Marc Elrich and Tom Hucker, are set to introduce the bill during Tuesday’s council session. A public hearing is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 19.
The bill would require employers of janitors, building cleaners, security officers, concierges, door people and maintenance workers at office buildings with at least 400,000 square feet of space to provide at least 30 hours of work each week.
The bill comes after the local chapter of 32BJ SEIU, which represents about 1,500 office workers in Montgomery County, protested pay and hours in June amid a labor dispute with the Washington Service Contractors Association.
The union and contractors association eventually agreed on a new contract. Riemer, who attended one of the protests in Bethesda, hinted then that he would submit legislation to require employers to provide enough hours to office cleaners and janitors so they could qualify for health insurance.
Some of the office cleaners who took part in the June protest said they had to work multiple jobs because employers were intentionally scheduling them for part-time hours so they would be under the legal threshold for having to provide health insurance.
The bill would apply to only the very largest private office buildings in the county. Office buildings owned by the federal, state and county governments would be exempt from the requirement.
According to a list of office buildings in the county published earlier this year by the Planning Department, five county office buildings would be covered by the new law.
Two of those buildings, 5600 Fishers Lane in Rockville and 1315 East West Highway in Silver Spring, count federal government agencies as tenants.
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is located in the 801,000-square-foot Fishers Lane building owned by The JBG Cos. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is in the 1315 East West Highway building.
The other three office buildings with more than 400,000 square feet of space are 9707 Medical Center Drive in Rockville, the vacant former COMSAT building in Clarksburg and Silver Spring Metro Plaza 2.
