$20 an Hour for Janitors?
Activists in the Harvard Living Wage movement are organizing in support of
$20-an-hour minimum salaries for Harvard janitors. That's about a $40,000 salary.
40k a year isn't really all that much, especially when you consider the enormous sums being made by people at the top of the American income scale. (It's probably closer to $50,000 a year when you throw in health insurance and other benefits.) But it's surely far above market wages for janitors in the area, and I'll bet it would make the Harvard janitors better-paid than, say, many public school teachers.
In an ideal world, janitors probably should make more than they do, and hedge fund managers should make way, way less than they do. But somehow, I don't think this organizing movement is going to catch on. Everyone's feeling cheap these days.....and Lawrence Summers has never shown himself to be either sympathetic to activism or a great supporter of intervention in the free market.
I'd be curious to know what readers think about $40,000 for janitors...particularly as compared to salaries in other low-paying fields.
