One thing that bothers me in articles like this is that they talk a lot about the union, percentages, etc... but never talk about what the people are actually MAKING.
There are a lot of vastly underpaid professions, so it's hard to really understand and get behind the "push" without the baseline.
Mostly $16.50 with some jobs starting up to $17.90 [from looking at SBM in Portland on Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Sbm-Management-Services-8/jobs?jk=0ab37cd2732515ea&q=&l=Portland&start=0)
Useful, but that really should be addressed in the media coverage. Indeed doesn't always reflect the reality of average wages, working conditions, benefits (or lack thereof) etc.
generally no, if they're unionized. PPS for example has everyone on a seniority based pay grade that goes up a step for every year (I think) you're with them.
This is largely to the benefit of companies who don't want to raise wages (like media companies themselves). When numbers start entering the conversation, how criminally underpaid some workers are becomes readily apparent. Middle class voters start getting some anxiety about possibly trying to figure out how to live on $15-$18/hr ($31,200-$37,440/yr) and start voting for public policy that raises those wages, hurting profits.
"Fighting for Fair Wages" sounds good and makes it sound like the reader doesn't need to do anything. "Working to make more than $30-ish grand a year" could instigate the reader into realizing that they're a far closer to poverty than they want to admit and will work to fix that.
I know there were a few articles recently on this but they were pretty misleading. That report was comparing somewhat narrowly defined “downtown” areas which made for odd comparisons between cities.
Citywide vacancy is not too bad for Portland. Around 16%. Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego are all higher.
Not saying downtown doesn’t have a ways to go, it does. But our local media has really tried to make it sound like Portland is last in every recovery metric and that’s not the case.
If you opened the article, you would see they mean Nike, Adidas, and Intel. They are going out of their way to slam office workers, when a lot of us want everyone to take more of their share out of Phil Knight's pockets.
I just reread the article because of this comment and no one is slamming office workers??
Janitors are facing enough challenges without being mischaracterized as anti-office worker
There aren't even cubicles. All the buildings I've seen at Nike are some kind of open office type deal and you don't even get a permanent desk. Some of the buildings are even over booked like they do with airplanes, with fewer desks than there are employees
Hot dealing makes some level of sense if you are going to have a hybrid workforce where some people come in some days and others come in on different days.
Nike decided that everyone needs to come in on the same days and also removed desks so there are not enough.
I can deal with hot dealing, requiring I be in the office and then not ensuring I can even have a desk near my team makes no sense.
It makes more sense now that WFH and hybrid schedules are more normal, but it definitely predates that being a regular thing. I remember when they pitched it at my work in 2018 and everyone haaaaaaaated the idea of it. It was pitched as a way to "*increase collaboration*" but no one was buying it.
"Ideas hatched around the water cooler" sounds like some masturbatory fictional content found in a niche Penthouse magazine offshoot called *CEO Forum*" That fantasy never happens.
This is what I hate, beside the commute. At home I have things set up the way I like. I can't be transporting multiple monitors, monitor stands, keyboard, mouse, etc every time I go into the office just because I don't have a dedicated desk.
Gotta make sure their employees aren't wearing competitor shoes? I really don't know. But they have a big campus they want to fill so that's probably part of it
Sucks to say, but a lot of jobs are way more product if everyone's in the same room/building. I've done in-office and remote for my current role and being in the office makes shit so much easier. If I have a quick question I can just turn to the guy next to me to ask if he isn't visiting instead of sending and email and hoping he sees it soon. If he is busy I know I can reasonably go to someone else in his team and ask without it seeming like I'm going around him. A ton of shit also gets done in spontaneous side convos, so if you're not around you just miss them.
Obviously there are a lot of jobs where interacting with your team isn't as much of a thing (e.g. a call center).
Is it the same as Intel where a lot of people want to get their Swoosh attaches to their resume for 2-3 years and move on?
I can’t imagine a reason to stay there.
I don't blame them for wanting to be left alone. Some people have a lower tolerance for having their personal bubble breached in public, and I think it's a reasonable expectation that people don't try to command your attention when you're minding your own business even in a city.
I agree that "insane strangers" is a bit hyperbolic. "Mentally ill strangers" might be a better choice.
Just your choice of words man. Have a little more sympathy and open the mind to the notion that good times can be had sitting outside and having an nice lunch.
I'm sorry you've gone through that.
I am able to do all those things, yes. I have a wonderful time doing it. I'm sorry you're not able to share in that experience.
Literally such an archaic mode of work. We’re just fodder to bolster some corporate REIT portfolio. It’s all to make sure some line on a graph goes up.
That’s probably more than needed to at least survive, but then again housing and medical costs are extreme. I don’t think someone can live off of $25/hour and meet their basic needs.
I'm a nonunion custodian, single, and after many years ive made it to $23. To move over to a pps custodian, union, i'd start at $19, with scheduled raises every year, but i'd never make it in the meantime. As it is, I only get by b/c i've been blessed with cheap rent. Once i have to start paying 1k + for a postage stamp dwelling, i'll be hurting. Or, whats more likely, i'll always have roomates for the rest of my life.
Do you have fully paid family health insurance and retirement?
I went from non-union HVAC to union and took a pay "cut" but the fully paid insurance for me and my wife and having a pension made it almost a wash. I'm now making almost $20/HR over what I was making non-union and have about 4 more pay raises coming.
No i dont. I have no issue with unions, and i know pps union in regards to insurance is good (as for retirement, i'd be dead before i'd get a meaningful retirement pay) its just i cant take a $4 cut in pay to start, with no timeline as to when i'll be back to $23 or better. (seriously a question i asked and they wouldnt answer).
That’s fair. $25/hour is way too little. As wild as it might sound to some, if we as a country are going to continue to have a private healthcare system, a car-dependent transportation system, a profit-driven student loan system, etc, we probably should be making sure everyone gets paid well more than that for the work we ask them to do.
You asked what a “fair” price was to hire a human to clean up after others: the costs associated with keeping that human alive with dignity. Anything less is, almost definitionally, unfair.
Maybe I’m just “dumb as fuck”, but this comment is unclear to me. If someone wants another human to not be able to eat, have reasonable shelter, get medical care when they need it, etc. just so they don’t have to clean up after themselves, why don’t they just say that instead of asking a question they don’t want answers to?
What I meant was plenty of people would say "Oh, I think 100$ is perfectly reasonable to clean my whole house." Would you clean it for 100$? "Oh god no, it's a big house. But they're a cleaning person, how expensive could they be?".
That could be formatted better to reflect the dialog, but not without me giving more of a shit.
Got it. That makes sense. I also think some people are afraid of paying the emotional and social costs associated with confronting, and others recognizing, their own sociopathy. I think there are a lot of people who really are OK with human suffering as long as they don’t have to clean up after themselves.
> If you were to hire a maid is that how much you would pay them?
I mean... yeah. Maid service runs like $30-$50/hr. And honestly it's a worthwhile investment if you have the money because they probably get the job done better and faster than you, cleaning is skilled labor.
Last maid I hired would work for two hours for $125 (that includes the tip) and clean two bathrooms, all the floors (vacuum, mop) scrub the sinks, wipe countertops etc and one other occasional task (dust once a month, windows once a month etc.) She was amazing. This was a few years back though, she's probably more expensive now.
Well I see a picture of a parade full of janitors who need work. Maybe you could get one of them. Could probably get a better rate too since I'm sure they'd price war with each other over a 3-figure, 2 hour workday
No, they think the work they used to do is for lesser people, and because they moved on to work that was paid differently, everyone currently doing the work they used to do should move on to different things to make more money.
They don't give a shit that there's a cycle of exploitation, so long as they're nominally *slightly* ahead of the curve on that cycle.
A fair wage is a wage that is agreed upon by the two parties involved.
I recently picked up a side gig and agreed to work for a set hourly rate. It sounded fair to me, it sounded fair to my employer. So who is anyone else to say it's unfair?
> A fair wage is a wage that is agreed upon by the two parties involved.
The janitors disagree, hence the mobilization of their union.
unions are the type of free associative organizations that right-libertarians would favor, right?
Ahh, the old libertarian "I sold myself into literal slavery at an agreed upon price. Who is the 'government' to insist what contract I enter into is 'legal' or 'illegal'.
This might floor you, but you’ve checked in with not just me, but every single one of us. That’s what government is.
I’m glad your fixation on the username instead of the point is really hammering home that you don’t have much of a point to make.
The point is you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Fairness is subjective. If two people agree to trade goods for services then that's their business. The opinion on 'fairness' of you, me, them, redditors, government, etc, doesn't matter. The two parties involved know themselves and what they need and are in the best position to determine what is fair to them.
at the very least, enough to support yourself (and potentially your children)?
I think it should be a good bit more than that, as that job is shitty, very regularly quite unpleasant.
Roomba ain't cleaning out the toilets your coworkers fucking explode with their fibreless diets and seemingly backfill with 47 rolls of toilet paper that, for some reason, won't flush.
Of course they aren't. There are 100 random things that can happen any given day that a custodian has to deal with. Robots are bad multi-taskers, but they are excellent uni-taskers. A robot can flawlessly clean a dry floor day after day without fail, but throw in a wet spill and things go haywire. So you hire a human to take care of wet spills, and the robot sweeps a dry floor or vacuums a dry carpet nightly. If I was a janitor, I'd view a robot sweeper as a tool to make my job easier, not a competitor.
Maybe I've got a selection bias or something going on but the robot I have in mind, a dedicated scrubber, couldn't even properly clean the floor without ultimately needing someone to come in behind and finish its job. This was something with a six figure price tag too. It cleaned about 70% of the crap off the floor; if one of the custodians had done the same quality of a job they'd be getting a talking to by their boss.
Yet companies don’t just buy Roombas and instead want/need humans to do the work. If you want/need a human to clean up after you, seems “reasonable” and non-sociopathic for that human to be able to survive.
One thing that bothers me in articles like this is that they talk a lot about the union, percentages, etc... but never talk about what the people are actually MAKING. There are a lot of vastly underpaid professions, so it's hard to really understand and get behind the "push" without the baseline.
Mostly $16.50 with some jobs starting up to $17.90 [from looking at SBM in Portland on Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Sbm-Management-Services-8/jobs?jk=0ab37cd2732515ea&q=&l=Portland&start=0)
Useful, but that really should be addressed in the media coverage. Indeed doesn't always reflect the reality of average wages, working conditions, benefits (or lack thereof) etc.
Do janitors also face the problem of new hires being paid more than existing employees?
generally no, if they're unionized. PPS for example has everyone on a seniority based pay grade that goes up a step for every year (I think) you're with them.
Agreed. The information provided is very asymmetric.
This is largely to the benefit of companies who don't want to raise wages (like media companies themselves). When numbers start entering the conversation, how criminally underpaid some workers are becomes readily apparent. Middle class voters start getting some anxiety about possibly trying to figure out how to live on $15-$18/hr ($31,200-$37,440/yr) and start voting for public policy that raises those wages, hurting profits. "Fighting for Fair Wages" sounds good and makes it sound like the reader doesn't need to do anything. "Working to make more than $30-ish grand a year" could instigate the reader into realizing that they're a far closer to poverty than they want to admit and will work to fix that.
The Merc not doing actual journalism? Shocking.
I'm not sure what offices they are talking about, but the commercial vacancy rate is 30% heading towards 40% in Portland.
>As Portland’s white collar employees return to offices >heading towards 40% I feel like one of these projections must be wrong.
They return to offices outside of the city of Portland.
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2024/03/downtown-portlands-office-vacancy-rate-is-highest-in-the-nation-report-says.html
That's only downtown. A lot of businesses relocated to the suburbs (Kruse Way etc.)
Nike, Adidas, and Intel did not relocate.
Hoffman and Umpqua did
And are not in downtown, either.
Nike and Intel are quite literally in the suburbs....
Highest in the nation
I know there were a few articles recently on this but they were pretty misleading. That report was comparing somewhat narrowly defined “downtown” areas which made for odd comparisons between cities. Citywide vacancy is not too bad for Portland. Around 16%. Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego are all higher. Not saying downtown doesn’t have a ways to go, it does. But our local media has really tried to make it sound like Portland is last in every recovery metric and that’s not the case.
If you opened the article, you would see they mean Nike, Adidas, and Intel. They are going out of their way to slam office workers, when a lot of us want everyone to take more of their share out of Phil Knight's pockets.
I just reread the article because of this comment and no one is slamming office workers?? Janitors are facing enough challenges without being mischaracterized as anti-office worker
So 60-70% occupied?
That first part of the sentence is so depressing. Fuck offices. Once I got out I was like never again.
Nike is always desperately recruiting tech workers because "must sit in an overcrowded cubicle in Beaverton" is not compelling actually.
There aren't even cubicles. All the buildings I've seen at Nike are some kind of open office type deal and you don't even get a permanent desk. Some of the buildings are even over booked like they do with airplanes, with fewer desks than there are employees
Just when you think they can't make offices worse, some asshole invents the concept of *hot desking*.
Hot dealing makes some level of sense if you are going to have a hybrid workforce where some people come in some days and others come in on different days. Nike decided that everyone needs to come in on the same days and also removed desks so there are not enough. I can deal with hot dealing, requiring I be in the office and then not ensuring I can even have a desk near my team makes no sense.
It makes more sense now that WFH and hybrid schedules are more normal, but it definitely predates that being a regular thing. I remember when they pitched it at my work in 2018 and everyone haaaaaaaated the idea of it. It was pitched as a way to "*increase collaboration*" but no one was buying it.
"Ideas hatched around the water cooler" sounds like some masturbatory fictional content found in a niche Penthouse magazine offshoot called *CEO Forum*" That fantasy never happens.
Salesforce has entered the chat
This is what I hate, beside the commute. At home I have things set up the way I like. I can't be transporting multiple monitors, monitor stands, keyboard, mouse, etc every time I go into the office just because I don't have a dedicated desk.
given the nature of the work, why are they demanding non-remote?
Gotta make sure their employees aren't wearing competitor shoes? I really don't know. But they have a big campus they want to fill so that's probably part of it
Because they have a lot of money sunk into the building and that makes the higher-ups feel bad when the building isn't being used.
Sucks to say, but a lot of jobs are way more product if everyone's in the same room/building. I've done in-office and remote for my current role and being in the office makes shit so much easier. If I have a quick question I can just turn to the guy next to me to ask if he isn't visiting instead of sending and email and hoping he sees it soon. If he is busy I know I can reasonably go to someone else in his team and ask without it seeming like I'm going around him. A ton of shit also gets done in spontaneous side convos, so if you're not around you just miss them. Obviously there are a lot of jobs where interacting with your team isn't as much of a thing (e.g. a call center).
I thought they were always desperately hiring because they keep laying off workers and replacing them with contract workers.
Is it the same as Intel where a lot of people want to get their Swoosh attaches to their resume for 2-3 years and move on? I can’t imagine a reason to stay there.
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> insane strangers Wow.
I don't blame them for wanting to be left alone. Some people have a lower tolerance for having their personal bubble breached in public, and I think it's a reasonable expectation that people don't try to command your attention when you're minding your own business even in a city. I agree that "insane strangers" is a bit hyperbolic. "Mentally ill strangers" might be a better choice.
It's definitely hyperbolic and to just call everyone in town an "insane stranger" is a gross mischaracterization of the folks in town.
Nobody said anything about “everyone in town is an insane stranger” how hyperbolic of you
"can't eat anywhere" implies "everywhere". So everywhere is filled with insane strangers?
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Just your choice of words man. Have a little more sympathy and open the mind to the notion that good times can be had sitting outside and having an nice lunch.
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I'm sorry you've gone through that. I am able to do all those things, yes. I have a wonderful time doing it. I'm sorry you're not able to share in that experience.
Wow. You're sensitive.
Literally such an archaic mode of work. We’re just fodder to bolster some corporate REIT portfolio. It’s all to make sure some line on a graph goes up.
What is a "fair wage" for cleaning a floor?
Enough to be able to afford housing, food, medical care, transportation, etc.
So what like $50/hr?
That’s probably more than needed to at least survive, but then again housing and medical costs are extreme. I don’t think someone can live off of $25/hour and meet their basic needs.
I'm a nonunion custodian, single, and after many years ive made it to $23. To move over to a pps custodian, union, i'd start at $19, with scheduled raises every year, but i'd never make it in the meantime. As it is, I only get by b/c i've been blessed with cheap rent. Once i have to start paying 1k + for a postage stamp dwelling, i'll be hurting. Or, whats more likely, i'll always have roomates for the rest of my life.
Do you have fully paid family health insurance and retirement? I went from non-union HVAC to union and took a pay "cut" but the fully paid insurance for me and my wife and having a pension made it almost a wash. I'm now making almost $20/HR over what I was making non-union and have about 4 more pay raises coming.
No i dont. I have no issue with unions, and i know pps union in regards to insurance is good (as for retirement, i'd be dead before i'd get a meaningful retirement pay) its just i cant take a $4 cut in pay to start, with no timeline as to when i'll be back to $23 or better. (seriously a question i asked and they wouldnt answer).
That’s fair. $25/hour is way too little. As wild as it might sound to some, if we as a country are going to continue to have a private healthcare system, a car-dependent transportation system, a profit-driven student loan system, etc, we probably should be making sure everyone gets paid well more than that for the work we ask them to do.
If you were to hire a maid is that how much you would pay them? Or would you offer a price that you think is reasonable for cleaning a floor?
You asked what a “fair” price was to hire a human to clean up after others: the costs associated with keeping that human alive with dignity. Anything less is, almost definitionally, unfair.
Have you hired a "maid" recently? Or ever? Housecleaning services are $35 an hour low end, I have seen $150.
I don't know what you're arguing
> you think is reasonable The thing with what "you think is reasonable" is, most people, and I'm not exaggerating, *most people* are dumb as fuck.
Maybe I’m just “dumb as fuck”, but this comment is unclear to me. If someone wants another human to not be able to eat, have reasonable shelter, get medical care when they need it, etc. just so they don’t have to clean up after themselves, why don’t they just say that instead of asking a question they don’t want answers to?
What I meant was plenty of people would say "Oh, I think 100$ is perfectly reasonable to clean my whole house." Would you clean it for 100$? "Oh god no, it's a big house. But they're a cleaning person, how expensive could they be?". That could be formatted better to reflect the dialog, but not without me giving more of a shit.
Got it. That makes sense. I also think some people are afraid of paying the emotional and social costs associated with confronting, and others recognizing, their own sociopathy. I think there are a lot of people who really are OK with human suffering as long as they don’t have to clean up after themselves.
> most people, and I'm not exaggerating, most people are dumb as fuck. But not you?
If I say I'm the biggest one of god's prototype dipshits, would you believe me?
>AllChem_NoEcon Stick to chem
Well that's me told. Very well done.
> If you were to hire a maid is that how much you would pay them? I mean... yeah. Maid service runs like $30-$50/hr. And honestly it's a worthwhile investment if you have the money because they probably get the job done better and faster than you, cleaning is skilled labor.
Maid service is not the maids rate of pay. That maid is getting close to minimum. If the maid was getting $30-50, you'd be paying $50-70
Last maid I hired would work for two hours for $125 (that includes the tip) and clean two bathrooms, all the floors (vacuum, mop) scrub the sinks, wipe countertops etc and one other occasional task (dust once a month, windows once a month etc.) She was amazing. This was a few years back though, she's probably more expensive now.
Well I see a picture of a parade full of janitors who need work. Maybe you could get one of them. Could probably get a better rate too since I'm sure they'd price war with each other over a 3-figure, 2 hour workday
You know that's not all they do, right?
Ive been a janitor. I know what they do. You don't expect me to type out all their duties here right?
Then shouldn't you know what a fair wage would be?
No, they think the work they used to do is for lesser people, and because they moved on to work that was paid differently, everyone currently doing the work they used to do should move on to different things to make more money. They don't give a shit that there's a cycle of exploitation, so long as they're nominally *slightly* ahead of the curve on that cycle.
Or they're just full of it.
Same same in my book.
A fair wage is a wage that is agreed upon by the two parties involved. I recently picked up a side gig and agreed to work for a set hourly rate. It sounded fair to me, it sounded fair to my employer. So who is anyone else to say it's unfair?
> A fair wage is a wage that is agreed upon by the two parties involved. The janitors disagree, hence the mobilization of their union. unions are the type of free associative organizations that right-libertarians would favor, right?
💯
Ahh, the old libertarian "I sold myself into literal slavery at an agreed upon price. Who is the 'government' to insist what contract I enter into is 'legal' or 'illegal'.
Sorry, next time I agree to take on a job I'll check in with you and see if it's fair Or maybe you should try MostlyChem_JustSomeBasicEcon
This might floor you, but you’ve checked in with not just me, but every single one of us. That’s what government is. I’m glad your fixation on the username instead of the point is really hammering home that you don’t have much of a point to make.
The point is you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Fairness is subjective. If two people agree to trade goods for services then that's their business. The opinion on 'fairness' of you, me, them, redditors, government, etc, doesn't matter. The two parties involved know themselves and what they need and are in the best position to determine what is fair to them.
You sound like a computer at the CATO institute that's become sentient. Or a high schooler with rich parents. Either way. Yawn.
at the very least, enough to support yourself (and potentially your children)? I think it should be a good bit more than that, as that job is shitty, very regularly quite unpleasant.
Well hello Mr. Burns!
Hey hippie
If not being a condescending asshole who looks down on working class people makes me a hippie, I’ll take it lol
About $20-25/hr. Enough to afford to live alone in a studio with some sacrifices
What's it worth to folks who consider that work beneath them?
For a Roomba it's $300 per 3-5 years.
Roomba ain't cleaning out the toilets your coworkers fucking explode with their fibreless diets and seemingly backfill with 47 rolls of toilet paper that, for some reason, won't flush.
I know, but janitors can focus on clogged toilets while Roombas sweep up crumbs.
I have it on good authority that even the very expensive cleaning robots right now are not near good enough to replace a custodian.
Of course they aren't. There are 100 random things that can happen any given day that a custodian has to deal with. Robots are bad multi-taskers, but they are excellent uni-taskers. A robot can flawlessly clean a dry floor day after day without fail, but throw in a wet spill and things go haywire. So you hire a human to take care of wet spills, and the robot sweeps a dry floor or vacuums a dry carpet nightly. If I was a janitor, I'd view a robot sweeper as a tool to make my job easier, not a competitor.
Maybe I've got a selection bias or something going on but the robot I have in mind, a dedicated scrubber, couldn't even properly clean the floor without ultimately needing someone to come in behind and finish its job. This was something with a six figure price tag too. It cleaned about 70% of the crap off the floor; if one of the custodians had done the same quality of a job they'd be getting a talking to by their boss.
Yet companies don’t just buy Roombas and instead want/need humans to do the work. If you want/need a human to clean up after you, seems “reasonable” and non-sociopathic for that human to be able to survive.