The Problem of Part-Time Work
The problem is, that job does not exist for Houston janitors. With only part-time jobs available, I have to work two jobs. One of them is at the 1100 Louisiana building, where my job is to clean bathrooms on seven floors in four hours. I am paid $5.25 an hour. Completing each bathroom consists of cleaning the mirrors and walls, taking out the trash, mopping the floors, refilling toilet paper and cleaning the doors. To finish in time, you have to rush. And I have to rush because I have to be on time to my second job. My second job is as a janitor in the Toyota Center. I take a short bus ride from my first job to the next. The bus costs $7 a week, which costs me more than an hour's work. Working part-time is hard. It is hard on my family. I don't get to see my husband some days because I do not come home until he has left. Working part-time causes stress because I worry about how to make ends meet. Aurora Villareal | Part-Time Work Doesn't Add Up$5,512 What an average Houston janitor working part-time, four hours a night at $5.50 per hour, earns in a year. $19,350 The official federal poverty line for a family of four. Most observers believe the official poverty line significantly underestimates what it actually takes for a family to make ends meet. $35,798 The figure that many public programs -- such as the WIC, school lunch, and CHIP programs - use as a better measure of self-sufficiency for a family of four. The figure (185% of the poverty line) represents the earnings a family requires to meet its basic needs without government assistance. 131 Hours Per Week The number of hours a Houston janitor would have to work at $5.30 per hour to reach the self-sufficiency standard described above. A two-earner household would have to either work nearly 4 full time jobs or more than 6 part time jobs between them in order to provide for their family. |
Virtually all of Houston's commercial office janitors have to cobble together a series of low-paying, part-time jobs to make ends meet. Among all these jobs, they often work 50 or 60 hours a week -- sometimes more. As Aurora's story illustrates, part-time work often isn't the worker's first choice. As she says, it's not a little extra income, but the only type of work available.
Why is part-time work so difficult? For starters, the irregular hours and long travel times keep workers constantly on the go, away from their families. Because of the low wages, workers frequently rely on long commutes on public transportation -- if the buses even go between their first and second jobs. After a night's work, a janitor may only be able to catch a few hours of sleep before sending his or her children off to school and heading to a second job on the other side of town.
Irma Lopez is typical of how hard Houston janitors work to try to make ends meet. From 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, she cleaned office buildings, earning $5.15 an hour and bringing home $428 a month. To supplement her income she found work cleaning homes, which provided her with an additional $100 a week. On the weekends, she answered phones at an office.
Janitor Eleuterio Vazquez has a similar schedule, working a construction job from 7 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., then rushing off to his evening cleaning job from 6 to 10 at night. He cleans three floors on the building in his four-hour shift. Even with all this work, he still can only afford to share a two-bedroom apartment with four other men.
"I do the best I can but the workload is too much," Eleuterio says. "It's too much work for so few hours and not enough money."