The presumptive presidential candidates have taken sides in a labor dispute that has engulfed the Bay Area this week–and that reflects the growing income gap that is engulfing our country. While Senator Obama stands with area janitors who are fighting to win a higher standard of living for themselves and their families, Senator McCain is lunching with the CEOs of the multi-billion dollar corporations whose floors the janitors scrub for poverty wages.
Today Obama spoke out against the “unacceptable and ever-growing divide between the wealthiest and poorest among us” that keeps hard-working janitors like Cisco cleaner Maria Lopez making just $11.04 per hour after nine years on the job.
McCain, for his part, embraced that divide yesterday when he attended a campaign fundraiser in Atherton hosted by Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. The tech industry giant’s sprawling Silicon Valley campus is cleaned by the striking janitors who currently are paid just $23,000 a year–less than one third of what the Center for Economic Policy reports it takes to survive in California.
Some striking workers–on their way to a 600-person, 3-mile “march to close the gap” in Palo Alto–dropped by the fundraiser to call on the two Johns to stop turning a blind eye to the poverty their policies and decisions help to create. When they left, the workers left behind this flyer highlighting a scandalous equation: 10 tickets ($2,300 each) to the fundraiser = 2 tickets for the event’s VIP reception ($25,000 per couple) = 1 year’s salary ($23,000) for a Silicon Valley janitor.
The candidates know what’s at stake in this strike and they’ve made their allegiances clear. I encourage you to learn more and do the same.
~posted by Nadia, SEIU staff