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A
Hot Topic this Winter
The
City of Richmond employs temp workers to remove
leaves and pick up trash but doesn't pay them
close to a living wage.
As
the weather fluctuates, peppering each week with
hints of spring and winter, some might find cause
for confusion. But I'm not confused. It's
going to be a lean hard winter for Richmond's
working poor. Here in Virginia's capital, it's
easy to keep your bearings, to "know what
time it is," who's on top and who's on the
bottom.
The
leaves have fallen and blanketed my neighborhood,
and yellow signs have popped up in every Richmond
community. "Rake Now," they say, and
feature a prominent Richmond City seal. As a new
homeowner, I had to ask a neighbor for
instructions. The deal is simple: rake the leaves
to the curb and they'll magically disappear.
How convenient.
However,
there's more to this story. Richmond's leaf
program isn't convenient for everyone involved.
The system hardly works for those who make it
work.
After
piling my leaves by the street and all the cars
were notified not to park on the block for one
day, a big truck came around with men in orange
shirts running ahead and trailing behind. They
vacuumed up the leaves with an enormous hose
attached to the truck, and they raked what was
left to keep my street nice and tidy.
The
man driving the truck was a City of Richmond
employee, presumably with a CDL license and
hopefully paid a "living wage" of $8.85
with benefits or $10.55 without, as mandated by a
2001 ordinance that covered Richmond's direct
employees. The men on foot were day-labor
employees from one of the city's many downtown
temporary agencies that routinely receive
contracts from the City.
These
workers report for duty by 5 a.m. every morning
and earn between $5.15 and $6.50 an hour. They pay
extra for a ride to the worksite, pay extra for
gloves or safety equipment, and generally find
themselves treated with little regard.
To
many, Richmond's city contract workers are
invisible and so is their plight. At the end of
the leaf program workers' day, this arrangement
often amounts to sub-minimum-wage pay, low morale,
and dependence on social welfare programs. If a
temp worker strung enough of this work together to
afford a one-bedroom apartment, he'd have to work
115 hours per week. Meanwhile, the managers of the
temporary agencies are often making $5-$9 for each
hour that the worker is on the job.
That's
right: the city pays double the worker's meager
wage to wealthy middlemen. City Council members
have a routine excuse: These jobs are temporary
and the work is seasonal. This is why Mayor
Doug Wilder's prized pothole-filling program saw
fit to use the same means -- underpaid,
working-poor Richmonders, with all the profits
funneled to temp agencies.
However,
this seasonal excuse is not exactly honest.
Consider the Public Works trash truck that drives
through your alley every week, all year long:
a direct employee behind the wheel and two temps
hanging off the back. These jobs are not
temporary. It's the human beings disposing
of your trash who are being treated as disposable.
Their
orange shirts with City of Richmond logos are
actually emblazoned with the words "Temporary
Worker." Richmond's City Council has long
been urged to clean up its procurement practices.
Mayor Wilder routinely makes headlines with talk
of cleaning up our budgetary inefficiency.
Vice-Mayor Manoli Loupassi seems to relish doling
out sneers and rebukes to advocates of economic
development for Richmond's low-wage workforce.
Veteran Council members like Delores McQuinn have
alternately championed and disregarded such
ethical considerations depending on political
winds and the proximity of elections. Thus,
the infamous "cesspool of corruption"
has successfully drowned attempts by the Richmond
Coalition for a Living Wage to pass an ordinance
that would ensure that the city's contracts are
held to a higher standard.
Change
is visibly in the air along Richmond's main
corridors. Virginia Commonwealth University is
busy "beautifying" downtown with its
wrecking ball and pre-fab monoliths. More
commercial space is popping up all over.
Remodeling is rampant throughout the historic
districts. Wilder is delivering on his
promise to shake things up, for better or worse.
But
what about the 22 percent of Richmonders who are
suffering below the federal poverty line? What is
changing for them? A change of scene for many, as
homeless service providers scurry out from under
the looming footprint of downtown development.
Maybe a cleaner up-to-date jail is in the cards
for those driven to desperation. Otherwise, it
doesn't look like addressing the economic
exploitation of Richmond's working poor is a high
priority for Mayor Wilder.
The
janitors in City Hall continue to toil for poverty
wages right under the noses of our elected
officials. If they can't see what's right in front
of their faces, how can we expect any different
city-wide? While revenue-gobbling boondoggle
schemes continue to elicit hot and cold reactions
from Richmond's leadership, the people most in
need of economic development this Christmas will
surely continue to find themselves left out in the
cold.
--
November 28, 2005
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