Does anyone think a school janitor is underpaid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I had to go back to the school after-hours because I left some stuff in the library.

I asked the Janitor if he would let me in and he said that if I could wait a few minutes he would unlock the door, he was talking to me and said that he never gets enough time to do all the cleaning because the restrooms get so “f-cked up”, he said that he was making about 11 dollars an hour (he volunteered that info, I didn’t ask).
In one restroom alone there was a toilet that was clogged and overflowed and it still had poop and pee in it, somebody threw up in the sink, there was pee in the trash can and every single toilet has crap and/or pee in it, paper towels in the urinal and paper towels all over the floor and ceiling.
I know because I use that restroom, 11 dollars an hour? Shouldn’t it be more like 20 dollars an hour atleast?

2

$11 an hour is about $22,000 dollars a year if he works the full year. Beginning teachers make that in some states. I assume but don’t know that he gets pretty good benefits too. That is a big one.

Not everyone can make $40,000 a year ($20 hour). There are many, many jobs with worse conditions, less pay, and no benefits. I assume that he didn’t go to college and may not have graduated from high school. Those are the kinds of opportunities that are left if you want to work under a corporation or government system. It is certainly not the best job many people would gladly trade in their job at the assembly line/maid service/supermarket to have a job like that.

3

Insurance coverage and benefits are the hot buttons in relatively menial jobs like that. 11 an hour in not a particularly well paid job, but if he's getting the normal, local government benefits and coverage, it would cost me approximately 8,000 - 10,000 annually as a healthy 46 year old independent contractor to purchase private insurance coverage that approximated those benefits. I pay 5,000 annually for a high deductible plan that doesn’t even provide a shadow of those benefits.

4

I was a substitute janitor for my local school district. I worked at all three levels (elementary, junior high, high school).

Stuff like that…well, you get used to it after a while. It’s not an everyday thing (at least not where I was…). Other than that sort of thing, though, it’s a pretty boring, menial job (in my opinion, of course).

A typical day consisted of arriving just before classes let out. Once they did, I put away all the tables in the cafeteria and swept the floor. Then I would clean each of the rooms I was assigned to (about 20, depending on the school). Cleaning the rooms means emptying pencil sharpeners, dumping trash, dusting, sweeping the floors and cleaning the chalkboards. After that, I would clean 2 or 4 bathrooms. It varies with each school, of course, and there are incidentals (like setting up and tearing down concerts and basketball games), but that’s generally what I did. The shift supervisor was responsible for sweeping/mopping the hallways and common areas at most of my schools.

The job load varied a lot by school…for instance, at one of our smaller elementary schools, I handled the entire second shift myself, cleaning every room, all the offices, the cafeteria, gym, hallways, kitchen, all the bathrooms, and turning on the alarm when I left. The middle schools had crews of three (two janitors and the shift supervisor) on the night shift. The high school had about six or eight guys working at night.

Oh, and I wasn’t paid well, but that’s just because I was a temporary sub. From what I understand, the other guys weren’t too badly compensated. As the others have said, benefits played a big role, especially when contract negotiations came around.