Walleyed Snot Nosed Hissy Fit
Houston janitors, members of the Service Employees International Union, are on strike in Houston.
Janitors who clean Houston’s office buildings are paid less than $9,000 a year—less than half the poverty level. Their working conditions are deplorable and they’ve been threatened and harassed. They work cleaning up after for major corporations like Chevron, Exxon Mobile, Centerpoint Energy and Reliant.
So companies with CEOs making obscene paychecks are maximizing corporate profits on the backs of the working men and women of America who clean up their messes. There is something so damn shameful, unAmerican and humiliating in the eyes of a just and loving God about this behavior that I cannot even think about it without hollering.
These are honest Americans doing an honest day’s work, making half the poverty level. Even if both parents work, their children still live in poverty. This is not the America I love.
These are corporations who are also in cahoots with Republicans to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. They are also making middle America – you and me – help maximize their profits by sticking us with the bill for the social services and child health care for the children of these hard working Americans. Their jobs do not include health insurance for family members, so their children need state aid and free school lunches.
Because I am not a Republican, I cannot bare to see a child with strep throat or pneumonia go untreated and die because they cannot get healthcare. I understand that they are just children of working parents, and therefore not important like fetuses, but I cannot let them suffer and die like Republicans appear to be able to. So, I will pay my taxes and their corporate profits will continue to soar because I am taking care of their workers.
That is why I cannot understand why anyone making under $250,000 a year would ever, ever vote Republican. Don’t you see that they are bleeding you dry? They expect you to pay for their worker’s children because they want bigger, more grotesque profits.
If you work hard at an honest job, you ought to be able to live above the poverty level. A person working full time should not be shamed into needing public assistance. There should be honor in a job well done. This is damn America.
I am anxious to see the corporate big wigs have to clean up after themselves. Maybe a few days of restroom duty will convince them that janitors are admirable people and should be treated with respect.
Sadly, however, I doubt it. They look down their noses at anybody who actually works.
I stand with my brothers and sisters of SEIU. Their work has dignity. It is honorable.
This is America, dammit.
This one left me in tears JJ. Thanks for your passion in attempting to “speak truth to power.” I say “attempting” because they just will not listen. Three score and seventeen years I have walked the soil of this once great state. I have witnessed a lot of indifference, greed, and arrogance along side of so much misery and need but NEVER in the past has it been at the level that exsist all around me now.
1So very true. You don’t stand alone.
2One little thing to be pointed out from the SEIU site referenced…”These contractors need to be providing good jobs in Houston.”
It seems to me that the maintenance people do not work directly for the corporations, they work for a contractor of maintenance services who submitted the lowest bid for services to the corporations.
3Amazingly the Houston Chronicle has been covering this story. It makes my blood boil. I’ve worked for minimum wage and i barely got by. I don’t know how you can raise a child on those wages. My Dad worked for Ford Motor company for 40 years and he & Mom were able to raise 9 kids on his pay alone, thanks to the UAW. My Dad was around when Henry Ford sent his goons out to bust union heads. But even old Henry knew that if he wanted his workers to be able to afford the cars they were building that he had to pay a semi-decent wage. People are so gd stupid that they begrudge the unions wages and benefits instead of working with them to get the same for themselves. They used to ride on the gains of the union workers. But now that the unions have been all but neutered the hangers on and naysayers are reaping the whirlwind. A pox on all their houses.
4This makes my blood boil, too. Dammit! This is very very wrong, on so many levels. Grrrrr…
5Legion 357, that doesn’t get the corporations off the ethical hook. That’s the kind of weasel argument they make, sure–“It wasn’t us, it was our subcontractor.” They were the ones who wrote the bid specifications. They were the ones who damn well knew what going for the lowest bidder meant.
Appalling, disgusting, heartbreaking…and the smugs in charge spend millions to support the campaigns of those who will make things even worse.
6As a retired member of SEIU, I can tell you all that the only thing keeping this former hospital worker off the poverty line was my union. We always fought against contracting-out service jobs in the hospitals in Ontario, and the avoidance of responsibility by the real user of the contracted-out services was the largest reason why. I have to stand with my Union siblings. I cannot do otherwise.
7Right on, JJ! I don’t, for the life of me, understand how anyone can vote or be a republican. I don’t know who actually said this, but it is true: “There are only two kinds of Republicans–millionaires and fools.” Nuff said…
8A good column by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post about how wages declined as unions declined:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-happens-if-america-loses-its-unions/2012/06/12/gJQA1d7UYV_story.html
9If I can make you afraid of just one thing, I can get you to vote for people who will take your money and give you nothing. If I make enough people afraid of enough one things, I win and they all lose. But they think they won.
FDR Was right — the only thing to be afraid of is people who tell you to be afraid.
10As the owner of a small business employing uneducated, people for $10 an hour–I made sure they had the option of health care as well, and they got at least one if not two meals on their shift.
11I only made $10,000 a year for my 120 hour work week and ended up selling after 3-4 years to a family (their relatives worked without pay)–but I never took advantage of my employees–they were so involved with what we were doing I came in one day in early Oct on a weekend to find two of the women up on ladders decorating for Halloween–(decor they bought)
when I said I couldn’t pay them, they said–we want to be here–good working conditions–LOL!
JJ, when I went to the site, I did a search on “janitor” to see if any more recent articles came up, because I saw that the one you posted was 9 days old. I got this http://www.seiu1.org/?s=janitors&submit-btn=Search, the topmost of which, dated 6-14-2012, will horrify you. It is titled, “Police Horses Trample Janitors, One Arrested at Peaceful Protest Downtown.”
I read the whole page of articles, it’s awful! I’m hurting, but I’m making a LOT more than these poor folks.
12“The janitors, who make $8.35 an hour, are seeking a contract that will bring that to $10 an hour in three years. Union officials say the companies have proposed a contract that would raise hourly pay to $8.85 by 2016.”
Wow. A dime an hour per year. How can you turn THAT down?
Your words are eloquent, Miss Juanita, but I admire them with a heavy heart.
13This is awful. I don’t know how they do it here in Texas, but in California and many other states office building leases pass along to the tenants the increases in the buildings’ operating costs, which include increases in janitorial. While tenants do not relish increased costs, most understand when they sign the leases they will be paying increased costs. Employees who are paid a decent wage do better work, but that doesn’t seem to matter to some employers.
14JJ, you nailed it…beautifully.
Thank you.
15Pay attention, people, because Perry and his mugs (and apparently Mr. John Sharp is one of them) are pulling that same stunt at TAMU – you know, the one where they “privatize” services. That’s more of OUR money that is going to go into some crony’s pocket. People who have worked in the Physical plant for 30 yrs are going to be fired and offered “rehiring” at half the pay rate.
I’m so TIRED of the fat cats crying poor. Bait and switch is the name of their game, and yet, we just keep playing. 🙁
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