New Brooms

It is ironic and fitting that the Nancy Cleeland article on janitors be in the entertainment section, since the Justice for Janitors movement is a grim joke (“A Fight for Dignity,” Oct. 17).

In most major cities, including this one, the building maintenance staff used to be on the building payroll, with a building engineer or superintendent in charge. Unions and the threat or organization over the years got the pay up to about the level of the living wage that is advocated now for airport contract workers.

These jobs, held by local people, were ruined almost overnight by immigrants who worked for outside contractors. Now there is agitation to restore the very things, higher pay and benefits, that were eliminated by the wage-cutting newcomers. Real justice would be for the former incumbents to be restored to these jobs at the new higher wages, with benefits.

Another unfortunate byproduct of the present system is the lack of upward mobility. A contract worker has no chance of working up to the mail room, and from there to an office job, or to a machine operator and on to plant manager and company president.

JOHN GLOVKA

Culver City