Custodial jobs aren’t exactly dream jobs. High school guidance counselors rarely enumerate the benefits of plunging toilets and sweeping classrooms.
A member of the Student Equality Commission now proposes to raise these jobs wages to the “living wage” of at least $9.50 per hour.
I would imagine cleaning up an institution of higher learning would be quite demeaning. After all, University custodians must clean among us, who are on at least a quick-paced track if not a fast one to cushy jobs.
I don’t know if I would have the same emotional stamina to clean up after privileged college students who, at the very worst, have reasonably set student loans payable years from now.
On top of that, many of us also have part-time jobs, and many of them pay more than the $6.24 hourly pay that University custodians make.
What bitter irony that we can get student jobs paying more than our janitors.
One must be wary of simply tacking on additional wages for bad luck or poor education. Our custodians didn’t set the world on fire. And some have made poor decisions which have further eroded the possibilities that students have before them.
But that is no excuse for them not to enjoy a standard of living above the country’s poverty level.
The problem with the argument of Samori Camara is that many custodians are making a “living wage.” For the United States, the poverty level for a family of four is $18,500.
Before the incredible surge in single parenting stemming from higher levels of divorce, obstinacy towards marriage and sexual cavalierism, that meant there were two adults, and perhaps both were wage earners.
One custodial supervisor cited in a Monday Daily Reveille article is a single mother of three children and makes more than the poverty level for a family of four.
It is ghastly to nitpick about the poverty line, I know, but the University is not a welfare state, the government is.
The United States Department of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development are responsible for making food and shelter affordable for the less privileged not an employer.
The University provides reasonable insurance plans and offers tuition-exempt classes, among other benefits. If the University isn’t competitive enough, employees should strike or find employment elsewhere.
That having been said, custodians do deserve “living wages,” and some are already making them.
Most employees everywhere need higher wages, especially in low-income employment positions in low-income states such as Louisiana.
But more so than just higher wages, people need to escape the cycle of poverty.
Education and affordable health care can raise entire families out of poverty. Entrepreneurship programs and job-skills classes raise people out of the poverty sector of industry. Some sort of tuition exemption for children of University workers is a grand idea.
Merely raising wages only keeps with the status quo.
In “Caddyshack,” Judge Smails said, “Well, the world needs ditch diggers too.”
It might be cold and callous, but the University needs custodians too. And the very nature of custodial work is simple enough not to require specialized skills or education, meaning they are never going to be making higher wages than near the poverty line.
We can, however, provide their children with the opportunity to achieve more than their parents can.
 
Lake is a history senior. Contact him
at [email protected]