As I listened Tuesday (July 31) to Marketplace, a radio program from American Public Media (APM), a feature under the heading of Wealth & Poverty brought three words to mind: fairness, justice and equality.
The feature by Krissy Clark reported on janitors in Houston, Texas who – to quote from one of the introductory paragraphs for the piece – “are among the lowest paid in the nation, though they clean the offices of some of the richest companies in the world in a city that’s booming.”
As I listened to the report, I found myself wondering: Can’t we in our country do better than this?
See what you think. Check out Chrissy Clark’s report by clicking on the following link and – after doing so – feel free to share YOUR thoughts with River Country Journal readers by using the ‘Leave a Reply’ comments form you’ll find at the bottom of the page. Here’s the link: Houston janitors fight for fair pay in economic boom
Bruce Snook
River Country Journal
Unfortunately this story is indicative of what is happening in this country and throughout the world. What ever happened to a proper day’s pay for a proper day’s work? Who will clean the toilets or the floors if the janitors don’t? A sad thought is that there may eventually be an increase in the wages of the janitors, but then the number of janitors will decrease because of it.
The economic problem with our country is a bit broader than that…..
Suffice to say that the broader problem, if allowed to proceed on its current path, will undoubtedly right-size the ratio of janitors to the number of locations to clean. Why? Because all of our jobs are being farmed out to other countries that really could give a crap about fairness. Those that do have jobs probably are working for the same pay or less than they were making a few years ago. Betcha a milkshake that the vast number of folks around here that were unemployed that did find jobs later are comparatively underemployed insofar as net pay and benefits… So if you think wage freezes or wage reduction problems are unique to the bottom end of the food chain only in this country…let me tell you from personal experience it’s hit the middle class also. I made a helluva lot more 14 years ago than I do today….I guarantee you my expenses didn’t shrink in 14 years….I mean are you paying less for water/sewer, natural gas, fuel for your car, etc?
So rest assured some years from now there will be similar articles in foreign printed news publications about all these darn US immigrants taking up jobs in China, Mexico and India because all the jobs that were here are now over there… and all this discussion about fairness and equality…well that’ll be the least of our problems. And it only snowballs from here… alot of so called skilled labor is being sent overseas simply because of wages… well send all those jobs over there long enough, then we no longer have folks left alive to pass the knowledge base or skillsets on to the next generation to even have a choice…..unless of course you wanna teach the kids how to speak, Spanish, Hindi or Chinese.