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Author Topic: Subcontracting
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 28 January 2008 03:18 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Status of 'subcontractors' and wages form core of drive to unionize

quote:
When dusk falls and the city's business elite heads home, a uniformed army of thousands moves into Toronto's office towers for their nightly assault. Armed with mops and pails, cleaning carts and floor buffers, they take up their posts and wipe, scrub and dust 'til dawn.

Office cleaners, predominantly visible minorities from Central and South America, are among the most invisible of low-paid workers. Primarily women, they often work alone, and through the night.

But the lowly scrubbers of the city's tiles and toilets are front and centre in a campaign for better wages and working conditions that pits a big North American union against the Toronto cleaning industry's last big holdout.

The Service Employees International Union is leading the unionization drive, known across North America as "Justice for Janitors." In Toronto, the movement began with the union quietly trying to convince the city's four major cleaning companies to agree to a city-wide standard that would stop the decline of cleaners' wages as they bid for competing contracts.



From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
adam stratton
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 14803

posted 28 January 2008 06:43 AM      Profile for adam stratton        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Whether in the public or private sector, this sub-contracting has always ben a means for exploiting workers.

Unfortunately the very public that accepted it in the public sector because it "saves taxpayers money", have no solid ground to condemn it in the private sector.

Instead of providing services, government use subsidies and conracts to agencies most of whom pay their workers barely subsistance wages and minimum benefits, if any. That goes from day-care centres to shelters for the homeless and many other services. In fact we have (family) shelters that are run by cities with workers wages starting at $20.00/hour and contracted out shelters for singles (men and women) with workers wages starting at $10.00/hour.

You got me going.. I digressed, but I am sure you see my point.


From: Eastern Ontario | Registered: Dec 2007  |  IP: Logged

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