The Janitors' Closet

"...To Stop The Spread of Disease"

Good article in Cleanlink, "Janitors Should Wear Gloves and Face Masks...."

Can't put it better myself:

"Frequent hand washing has been promoted universally by public health officials for many years; however, the importance of using gloves as an infection control tool goes along with hand washing. Hands are kept cleaner and do not spread harmful organisms nearly as often when protected by a glove barrier.  Gloves should be worn by all janitorial workers when cleaning and handling chemicals. OSHA requires that gloves be worn when using almost every commercial chemical. Certainly this is a good practice from a worker safety perspective but it is equally important regarding infection control."

We stress gloves (latex or other), most especially when cleaning restrooms and lunchrooms, and throughout the facility.  We also stress safety glasses, when cleaning restrooms (think splashing bowl acid in ones eyes) and when mixing chemicals.  Face-masks are useful when in contact with or working around others; as we only do after-hours cleaning, face-masks are of less benefit to our people or our clients.  (In passing, if doing day cleaning, I wonder about the decidedly mixed message one would be sending to the office workers one is working around, who generally do not wear face masks at their desks.) 

We clean for health.  When I keep my people healthy, they're at work and I don't have to be; when I keep my client healthy, he can send me checks.

How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?

Ran across an interesting study by the National Bureau of Economic Research on one effect of skilled immigrants.

"The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, and that this is entirely accounted for by their disproportionately holding degrees in science and engineering. These data imply that a one percentage point rise in the share of immigrant college graduates in the population increases patents per capita by 6%."

Fits with what I've suggested in  "Give Us Your Huddled Masses of Engineers".  Allowing in high performers benefit our society in many ways.  Given that I do janitorial service in Arizona, a border state, I focus a bit on the impact of our immigration policy (and lack there-of) on the lower end of the employment spectrum, but our policy on the higher end is at least as counter productive.

Fire the janitors, hire kids to clean schools

Good article on ll/18 in Politico on a Newt Gingrich speech at Harvard's Kennedy School; responding to an undergraduate's question about income inequality, he remarked:

"This is something that no liberal wants to deal with," Gingrich said. "Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.

"You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I've tried for years to have a very simple model," he said. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

Newt further points out that most successful people started working, part time, at between 9 and 14 years of age.  Low end entry level is fine; get any job that teaches you to turn up on time, every day, and work until done.

Nothing wrong starting with janitorial, either.  Our most intelligent ignored president, James Garfield, grew up dirt poor.  His freshman year in college, he supported himself as a janitor.  His second year, he taught literature, math, and classical languages.  At 26, he was president of the university.  It is claimed that he not only spoke fluent Greek and Latin, but could write them - simultaneously - one with each hand.

Janitors can be upwardly mobile.

 

Benefits of raising the minimum wage

Bit of discussion on my Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce site; we're raising the minimum wage to $7.65 in 2012.

You'd think, in a time of high unemployment, we'd try to make lower skilled and entry level employees more affordable to employers, so more folks might be hired.  Even in times of high employment, whenever we raise the minimum wage, unemployment among youth, the unskilled, and some minorities spikes. 

We also do quite an effective job of keeping people unemployed by requiring state licensing (involving extensive training and fees) for one to enter a great many catagories of employment.  As just one example, in Arizona one has to pay for and complete some 400 classroom hours of training, pass exams and pay fees, to become a barber.  Multiply that by hundreds of occupations and professions, and by 50 states.  With high barriers to enter many occupations, high "structural" unemployment becomes understandable. 

On the other hand, a higher legal minimum wage, and tighter legal restrictions on who can hold jobs, do make illegal employment much more attractive, to both employer and employee (particlularly in fields like janitorial, and in border states like Arizona...).  This should help job creation among those undocumented immigrants whom we've recently decided not to deport.  Always a silver lining.

Stability in the community

Had a meeting of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Leadership Council yesterday.  We batted around the issue of promoting membership in the Chamber, discussing the various educational programs the Chamber sponsors, the chance to run issues by a group of ones piers, and the client leads available through the group.

All good points.  For instance, I redesigned our website a few months ago based on recommendations from a consultant at a Chamber workshop - recommendations that would have cost handsomely if I'd hired a consultant myself (assuming that I'd even gotten around to it).  I also get a significant amount of business through folks I meet at Chamber events, though I do have to work at it - nothing is automatic.

But to me, the most important benefit of membership, particularly if maintained over the years, is the indication of stability and community involvement membership confers - particularly in an industry like janitorial, which harbors large numbers of less than stable firms.  I've literally hundreds of competitors in the the metroploitan market; a total of 12 janitorial services are currently Chamber members.  At 36 years, we have by far the oldest membership.  That, and our BBB and BSCAI memberships, are something I point out when delivering proposals.  Folks like to work with vendors with some staying power.

"Sears suffers as it skimps on stores"

Good article on the economic impact of deferred maintenance in today's Wall Street Journal.  Miguel Bustillo's piece contrasts traditional chain store annual maintenance spending of $6.00 to $8.00 per square foot with Sears current level, about $1.90; he ties maintenance spending levels to Sears steady decline in sales since 2005.  ("No one really comes here anymore", said the only customer to be found at the Sears store visited.)

The article does not specifically mention janitorial floor maintenance, but that's got to be a major part of the store's deteriorating appearance; for several years, I've heard stories around the industry about draconian reductions in budget, burnishing schedules, and so on.  A tacky looking floor in a big box store is about the first thing you notice on walking in - and you tend to not walk in again.  That's why, in even our smaller accounts, we pretty much insist on including appropriate floor maintenance (periodic burnishing, as needed refinishing) in our cleaning package.  A worn floor shouts lack of maintenance, lack of cleaning and sanitation, and lack of caring management.

Maintain it, and they will come (customers, that is).

 

Ecolab Receives Green Excellence Award

Article today in bsmag.com about our longtime floor finish supplier, Ecolab, receiving the 2011 Green Excellence Award from the Coalition for Government Procurement.  We felt that way about Ecolab long before the Coalition noticed.

Frankly, we use Ecolab's ultra high solids floor finish for a variety of reasons: great appearance, low lifetime maintenance costs, safety (it's non-skid) and, not least, a small environmental footprint.  We find that, pared with our aggressive burnishing program, the finish lasts for years - as a matter of fact, since we've only been using it for seven or eight years, we really don't know how long it will last in a low to medium traffic environment, as we've not yet had to re-strip such a job that we'd put the Ecolab finish down on initially.

Typically, we do a monthly burnishing and a very rare scrub and top coat (generally less than annually); we almost never have to strip.  Stripping is costly (labor and product), and not good for the environment (lots of stuff to manufacture and ship, and lots of old stuff to put down the drain).  So besides the environmental benefit of very infrequent strips, and infrequent top-coating, we save money.  We pass that savings along to the client, generally including the inexpensive periodic burnishing, and the moderately expensive but rare top coating, in with our monthly bill.  And avoiding expensive strips.  The client facility is thus properly maintained, and looks great ongoing, at a reasonable cost.  Client and environment both benefit.  And we look a lot better than our "competition".

Home Environment affects asthematic kids - in single parent homes.

Caught an article in USA Today (courtesy of the Indoor Air Quality Association's Digest) that "Home Environment affects asthmatic kids".

The article explores a study (not yet published or peer reviewed) claiming that "Children with asthma who live in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to return to the hospital for treatment within a year than those who live in two-parent homes".  Kids from low income families, as well as those from homes with "time constraints" , are also likely to face problems.  "Parents play an important role in controlling their child's asthma and it takes time, energy and resources to follow their physician's treatment plan, including reducing triggers and consistently giving medicines," Dr. Terri Moncrief said in a College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology news release.

While my firm combats asthma and allergy triggers in cleaning commercial facilities, clearly what folks breath at home is also an issue.  Cleaning ones home similarly to how we clean offices (HEPA filtered vacuums, microfiber mops and wipes, careful chemical selection, etc.) would doubtless benefit ones family, but many other factors are also in play.  Lower family income, and "time constraints" - that is, less parental time available to insure that the kid takes his medication or uses his inhaler - are clearly associated with single parent families, as are a variety of societal problems.  Statistically, the best indicator of a child's success in later life is the presence - or absence - of two parents.  Even the disparity of home mortgages granted to different races goes away if one corrects for single versus two adult households.

Society has become more accepting of divorce, and single-parenting; consequently, we've instituted no-fault divorce.  Many more families are single parent.  We see many programs, and suggestions of programs, to deal with the consequences.

Wonder if we might be treating the symptoms rather than the disease?