AllTheNewsThat
FitsVille
In the hunt and peck world that our online information gathering routines have become, it's easy to forget that there are still media organs out there organizing things daily.
I must admit, while I don't always agree with him entirely re: the organs he trumpets, I do find former ink-stained wretch Rod Mickleburgh's Twittmachine exortations to actually read, and pay for, dead tree versions of newspapers daily to be pretty inspiring.
Personally, I still buy dead tree versions of the Globe and the NYTimes once a week, religiously, and, worse, it drives C. crazy when every small town paper of any and all description fills the car when we travel.
Anyway...
This got me to thinking about the best of the online papers.
For me, it's still The Tyee, the progressive-focused media organ that Jason Kenney loves to hate.
One of my favourite pieces of the last few days is a story by Chris Cheung profiling one of those groups of folks that these difficult times have taught us actually matter. Here is his lede:
“Before, we were referred to as that cleaner,” said Vilma Lopez, who’s worked at a BC Hydro building for 17 years and cleaned houses before that.
“Now, people are recognizing our worth.”
At a time when everyone’s thinking about the surfaces they touch, the janitors who once quietly did the cleaning are now in the spotlight.
Any place — office, shelter, hospital — still in operation is being made safe by cleaners.
These days, that takes more work and involves more risk to the health of the cleaners and their families — who are still being paid close to minimum wage without additional hazard pay...
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On the Zoom machine the other day we were starting to plan how we would do things when and if we're allowed back into the lab and it struck me that my presence on-site probably matters least...After all, it's not like I'm the one who even knows how to twiddle the knobs to carry out the latest fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiments anymore given that it is my job to find/raise the money to do said experiments, not actually do them...It was a weird and likely very important realization.
Update: Another former ink-staineb wretch, Tom Hawthorn, just pointed me to a very worthwhile and important piece by a former Tyee staffer, Richard Warnica, on the situation in care homes published in the NaPo (which, I suppose, kinda/sorta more fully proves Mickelburgh's point).
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Open Thread
2 hours ago
2 comments:
Cleaners are an essential service that most tend to ignore. some seem to forget death rates started to go down once doctors started washing their hands back in the 1800s.
We need to look no further than the B.C. hospitals. Back in the last decade, el gord, gordon campbell, fired 9K women who mainly kept B.C. hospitals clean. The work was then contracted out and the wages for the cleaners fell so dramatically, people needed two jobs to keep afloat. What did we see in hospitals? Well we saw 86 people die in Burnaby General in 2 1/2 yrs due to il deficile. We had outbreaks of el dificile all over the province. Hospitals were dirty, dirty dirty.
Lets hope the provincial government gets rid of the contract cleaners and has hospital workers once again returned to their former status. these contacts which the government has with cleaning companies don't save us any money. if the contract cleaner hasn't started work and there is shit all over the bathroom in a hospital room you know who cleans it up: An R.N. yes some one with 5 years of University. cleans the toilets. Now when did that make sense. Bath rooms in hospital rooms are cleaned once a day? How good is that with 4 people to a room, all sick. if the bathroom needs to be cleaned twice that needs to be first vetted via the corporate on sight person and then the hospital is charged extra. Cleaners do not report to hospital staff but to the contractor. i've been in hospitals which were so dirty, the B.C. Ferries were much cleaner. Way cleaner. I wondered how BC ferries could be so clean and the hospitals so dirty.
Then there is the no small matter of keeping care homes clean. Obviously the job was not being done. That ought to be brought under the mandate of the provincial government and the wages for cleaners set by the government. We require people who work in resturants to take a food safe course, well cleaners need to take a course also because their employers aren't teaching them how to use disenfectants or anything else. On the other hand one could hardly blame the workers, theyre working two jobs to stay afloat.
If you do not have a clean office, factory, hospital store, etc. you ave germs and disease You can pay now or you can die later. the choice is ours. Some used to say cleadlyness was next to godleyness. My line is if you don't have cleandlyness you'll be meeting god a lot sooner than later.
Absolutely.
Thanks e.a.f.!
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