Who Employs Your Custodial Staff? A Librarian at the Kitchen Table. No.369.

The Service Employees International Union won the right to represent more than 400 janitors at the University of Miami on Thursday, creating the first union presence at the private school.

It's time to talk with your custodial staff. In former times custodial staff had civil service or government positions. Since the wave of privatization workers have lost rights and wages.

In "Disposable Workers: Today's Reserve Army of Labor," Magdoff and Magdoff state:

Part of the explanation for the meager support for those consigned by the capitalist system to the reserve army of labor is an ideologically-driven notion that has taken deep root among the U.S. population. The problems of the poor, according to this view, are mainly due to their own failings—they are lazy or just haven't had the foresight to get a good education, or had children when they were too young. This perverse logic, that an essential component of the economic system—produced and continually reproduced by capitalism—is somehow the fault of the least powerful, is also internalized by the poor themselves. Even if the myth were true, it would still be immoral to deny adequate shelter, food, and healthcare to the children of such "deficient" parents, or to the "failed" individuals themselves, for that matter. Racism also plays its part, with the misperception among many whites that welfare is a program mainly for minorities.

The AFSCME Privitization Update is a fine source for monitoring privitization.