Janitors For Kmart, Target, Toil In 'Modern-Day Slavery,' Labor Leader Alleges

Story updated on 5/8/2012

Janitors working at Target, Kmart, Best Buy and Walmart are toiling in such abject conditions that the worst instances of the conditions are akin to "modern-day slavery."

That's what Stephen Philion, the director of St. Cloud State's Faculty Research Group on Immigrant Workers in Minneapolis, claimed at a rally Wednesday, organized on behalf of 12 janitors who have filed suit against Diversified Maintenance Services, a Tampa, Fla.-based subcontractor. The rally was scheduled to coincide with the release of a labor rights' organization report documenting what it said was DMS' widespread exploitation of retail cleaning workers, including chronic withholding of overtime pay.

Speaking to the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, DMS' representation denied the charges.

"We do not agree with those allegations and we have evidence to the contrary," said Diversified's lawyer, Phillip Russell, from the Tampa firm of Ogletree Deakins.