Custodians Complain

The NY Times describes a dispute between the school custodians' union and the city: School Custodians Object as City Hires Private Firms. I don't know what the exact terms of the custodians' contract are, but of course, the city needs to honor existing contracts. That said, the custodians have little to complain about. I wrote at the start of the year about the amount of work teachers do to get their classrooms ready, including scrubbing mouse droppings out of cabinets. The Times article mentions that the contract lists a very limited set of tasks that custodians are supposed to complete. At our school, they sweep the floors and empty the trash daily, fix broken stuff (eventually), mop during vacations and at other times if something spills, paint during the summers, polish the floors during summer and winter vacation, and a handful of other things. Walls are only allowed to be painted once every 5 years. Things they do not do: wash windows ever (at least in my experience), clean closets or cabinets or light fixtures or radiators, all of which collect grime even when you try to keep them clean. Now, we get along well with our custodians, because we treat them well. We are friendly, we say please and thank you, and we make sure our kids keep our rooms clean. The custodians have figured out that once they do something for us, it stays done. So they are generally pretty helpful about stuff that needs to be done. I trust the custodians that I work with now, but in other schools there have been scandals where custodians were caught stealing things like paper towels (in bulk) and reselling them for their own profit. So, I have little patience for the complaints of a union that represents people who do very little and get paid quite a lot for it. One custodian at our school actually walks around singing made-up songs like "that b*tch can shove it... I'm gonna sweep my floors and go cash my check... I get paid more than she does...." The b*tch in question is the building principal.