Interesting Washington Post article about the working conditions of hotel cleaners in D.C.; management has been gradually getting them to do more and more work while the pay has only increased enough to keep up with cost of living. A friend of mine used to do hotel cleaning, and it always sounded to me like backbreaking work.
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September 28th, 2004 at 12:15 pm
What’s sad is that the working conditions in D.C. seem glorious compared to the ones in my hometown in rural Ohio. The economy peaked there sometime in the 1970s and is now kind of a sad joke. I took a job at one of the local hotels, with a troop of others like myself (female, unable for one reason or another to work in a factory, and desperate).
The pay was flatly minimum wage and the hours kept low enough so they didn’t have to issue benefits of any kind. The work was grueling, consisting of not only the shoving around of huge carts but the spraying of noxious chemicals in semi-closed off bathrooms. The male management was sure to remind you of how low on the totem pole you were and lobbed subtly misogynistic “jokes” in our direction.
If we wanted to earn “extra money” (meaning: afford to live), there was the option of coming back at two a.m. when the attached restaurant closed and cleaning it. It was one of those sports bar type places where people throw their peanuts on the floor. That job paid only slightly more than minimum wage. Oh, and no union in sight. I was not employed there for long.
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