I am just as fucking outraged as anyone. I am pro-union to the core. But the wingnuts will just be laughing when they read this.
" The janitors make on average $20 a day with no health insurance. The companies responsible? Chevron. And Hines Interest, the city's largest hometown building owner.
These people make on average $5.35 an hour."
Okay. Take these two statements together and it tells me that the average janitor works 3.75 hours a day ($20/$5.35). Somehow I doubt that is the median work day. Or I could take the "$20 a day" seriously and come up with $2.50 an hour based on a 8 hour day. Which in most cases would be literally a federal crime.
Look if you were to tell me that the average janitor working a 40 hour week was only grossing $214 a week or $10700 a year I would agree that it was an outrage ($5.35 X 40 X 52). But at least get the numbers straight. This isn't the econoblogs here but either we need some basic numeracy, some better editing, more context for these numbers or some combination of all three.
They work part time.
Janitors usually work at night.
More information on Janitors for Justice and the Houston protests....
as well as information on shift work.
http://www.houstonjanitors.org/wages/
Thanks for the link.
Look I am all for a living wage. As far as I am concerned Ivy League students are doing the right thing protesting that maintence staff should get paid real wages for what they do. But anyone who suggests that the fact that a 20 hour work week is not enough to "put food on your family" (in Bush's immortal words) is a reason for outrage needs to wake up.
I am all for universal health care. I am totally opposed to police using horses to trample workers on the behalf of corporations. For that matter I regard the replacement of the 48+ hour week with the five day 40 hour week as one of the triumphs of the American Labor movement.
But here is a hint. If your only employment is a 5 day 4 hour a night janitorial job, get another job. And if your combined wage for working 40 hours a week doesn't allow you to house and feed your family and doesn't give you basic medical care, then welcome to the working class struggle. We'll march shoulder to shoulder in our battle to get economic justice from the Man.
But if your story is "Man I have a hard time making rent working 18 hours a week at Blockbusters" well you can cry me a river.
The outrage is the $5.34/hour. We're working on that. That a 20 hour a week job doesn't come with a full benefit package? Not so much.
I did not read all of the posts but I would be surprised if anyone is seriously arguing that if you have an 18 hour per week job at Blockbusters then, all things equal, you cannot get another job.
I think we're in agreement, however, that the proliferation of part-time jobs with no benefits doesn't bode well for American working people, even most American working people who I would submit will work two or even three part-time jobs to pay the rent. But the fact is that part-time jobs and more and more full-time jobs are not providing American workers with basic medical care.
Now, there are many employers (like a Walmart for example) that I would say can afford to provide better health benefits to their workers. But there are more and more employers that are having a harder and harder time providing decent medical care. Gosh, this is the principal focus of just about all collective bargaining going on in this country and it's a genuinely difficult issue.
That's why I submit the focus has to be on how Congress can step in and de-privatize basic medical care to an appropriate extent. The time has come to address this issue.
An eighteen hour job at Blockbuster, is not the same as being part of a janitoral crew in office building...
and whatever you are for...perhaps someone day you will work in the office where people you will never meet will slave over cleaning up your messes....
and you go about your business saying what you are for or against, while adults with families struggle to stay alive...
living hand to mouth...with no little hope of having one tenth of what you have.
And here is another hint...
these people often work two or three minimum wage jobs.
Or they are single mothers with children who work nights just to put food in their kid's mouths. Cleaning up your messes should be worth more than five bucks an hour for hard work.
Every tried to get daycare on minimum wage?
It is easy to say that people who don't have your advantages shouldn't have children.
Or they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps like you....
but frankly, the contempt for the poor exhibited by your message belies the fact that the callous attitude expressed by people without an ounce of empathy for hardworking people looking to break the cycle of poverty.
Nanorich:
I trust you aren't directing your ire at my post, because I am not contesting your basic premise about the economic realities of being a janitor. My point was simply that at the macro level the issue of basic health care is not being adequately addressed in the private sector, even in the collective bargaining environment, where I serve as a union lawyer.
Nope, not talking to you....
however, if you look at the successes of Janitors for Justice in other cities, you will find that unionized workers in the service industries seem to be scraping by a little better where they ARE allowed by union rules to work fulltime...and given minimum benefits.
The world didn't collapse when Janitors for Justice won their fight in Los Angeles.
Amen to that my friend. No arguments about the merits of unionization from here!
http://www.seiu1877.org/articles/article .cfm?ID=3660
>2000 >In January thousands of janitors in Los Angeles County secure fully family health care benefits, per their 1995 contract. By February. janitors in Los Angeles begin contract talks for a new master contract. The contract expires on March 31 and talks stall as contractors propose to cut wages. On April 3, janitors vote to walkout on strike, the first countywide strike in 20 years. On April 24, after an intense three week strike that secured the largest wage increases for L.A. County janitors in decades, janitors vote overwhelmingly to accept a new three-year contract proposal. In May, janitors in Orange County begin to organize. There are nearly 3000 janitors cleaning hi-rises and office parks in the county. Despite working for may of the same cleaning companies that are unionized in other cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, janitors in Orange County earn wages that keep them below the poverty line and receive no health care benefits.
