Question of the Day: how much should a janitor get to keep our streets clean?

Public figure Pyotr Shkumatov started a discussion on his blog on a topic that is extremely relevant for our country this year: the salary of janitors. This topic appeared in connection with record snowfalls in Central Russia and, accordingly, impassable snow blockages in many cities. Peter looks especially shameful in this sense, and this, unfortunately, is already a tradition:

“This winter, especially a lot of people write about how badly they remove snow, especially from St. Petersburg there are a lot of them. “Where are the janitors?”, people ask, why do these scoundrels retrain for the winter as taxi drivers / couriers or even have the audacity to go home to warmer climes?

I answer as a man who worked as a janitor:

1. In winter, work as a janitor is several times harder than in summer. Firstly, snow removal and surface treatment with reagents are added to the usual duties. Secondly, no one gives out normal winter clothes to janitors. Those clothes that are, as a rule, are full and the cheapest shit, in which you get wet in five minutes, well, then hello a cold or even worse.
2. In winter, inhabitants with a split consciousness wake up. These are just stories about spring and autumn, in reality, these people who need to take pills show the most significant activity in winter. For example, in our district there was (now disappeared somewhere) a woman - an ardent defender of lawns, on which, according to the law, toxic snow cannot be thrown. And she walked around the yards, looked for violating janitors who threw snow on the lawn, took pictures, wrote complaints, forced the "dirty" snow to be removed from the lawn. As a result, as all normal people understand, they simply stopped removing the snow.
3. There are no additional payments for winter work as a janitor. Hemorrhoids are many times more, and you earn the same amount of money. At the same time, they constantly get to the bottom of the little things, for which you can get a fine. For example, that after the snowfall of the millennium, somewhere on the road there was unremoved snow that cannot be thrown onto the lawn (and no one says where to remove it). Of course, after a couple of such unfair fines that are deducted from the salary, not a single normal person will remain to work in such a job.
4. Subbotniks. Very often, after the next snowfall of the millennium, when the janitor has to clean his site, among other things strictly according to GOST, SNIPU, ANSI, IEEE and other UN international standards, a car of the housing and communal services troops arrives and takes the janitor to help in clearing other, more important urban objects. For example, stops. Then, when you have cleared 158 stops, you are brought back, where angry residents are waiting for you, who wrote 158 complaints to the governor personally about you, that you, such a dog, did not clean the snow on time.

Tell me, would you yourself work in such conditions? Probably not, if you are still on the couch, and not waving a shovel, clearing the snow next to your man-hill. That's exactly why smart janitors leave before the snow falls and go to taxi drivers or couriers, and after the snow melts, they come back. In such a situation, I am generally surprised that the snow is at least somehow cleaned and that not everyone quit for the winter.

So, if your yard is at least somehow cleaned, you must say thanks to your janitor, because all this is not due to, but in spite of ... "

The next day, Shkumatov wrote:

“Yesterday's post about cleaning snow with janitors and comments on it made me think.

It seemed very strange to me that many did not even want to think about the fact that a salary of 40 thousand (38, to be more precise) for a janitor in Moscow is approximately on the verge of survival. More precisely, work for a bed (300 rubles per day minimum = 9000 r / month) and food.

But there are also quite amazing stories that are beyond my understanding. For example, in the same Rostov-on-Don, the salary of a janitor is 10 (TEN) thousand rubles. Listen, this is the absolute bottom. That's even less than you have to spend on food! Who even goes there to work with such salaries??? I'm not kidding, look here:

The company "LLC Megapolis-Plus" offers a job in the city of Rostov-on-Don from 10,000 rubles. on the vacant position of "Janitor of housing and communal services". Responsibilities for the Residential Caretaker position include:

- cleaning of the yard, the adjacent territory,

- snow removal in winter.

- cleaning trash cans;

- cleaning of sidewalks from snow and frost;

- application of anti-icing agents on sidewalks, stairways

The requirements for an employee for the position of "Janitor of housing and communal services", presented by the employer "LLC Megapolis-Plus" in the city of Rostov-on-Don, are as follows:

- initiative, diligence, rationality,

- high adaptability and endurance,

The working conditions in the company "LLC Megapolis-Plus" for the vacant position "Janitor of housing and communal services" are as follows:

- work schedule 5/2 from 7-00 to 12-00

- stable and timely salary.

How is this at all??? One trip to the grocery store costs 10 thousand rubles, and the purchased products are enough for a week, a maximum of one and a half. Just don't say that after 12-00 the janitor goes to work somewhere else and earns five times more there. Rather, he will be offered a second site for the same 10 thousand rubles a month. Will earn 20 thousand. Ask yourself the question: why? If there are a million different ways to make that money without having to scrape snow and break ice?...

The answer to this question is rhetorical, and so everything is clear why the snow has not been removed, and your former janitor is now taxiing in a warm, checkered rental car. Another thing is strange: that someone is still working for this money, but there are definitely such people, I saw them ... "

Network analyst Maxim Slepov adds to Shkumatov's reasoning:

“ Peter gives numbers. In Moscow, this is 38 thousand rubles of salary. And in Rostov-on-Don, for example, they are looking for a janitor with a salary of 10,000 rubles ($131 at today's exchange rate). For this money you have to work 5 hours a day.

It may seem to someone that the janitors get money just like that? Do not know. Yesterday I once went out into the yard to place snow in the parking lot in front of the house, it poured once again. Half an hour of vigorous work - the whole back is wet, it is necessary to change the T-shirt and sweatshirt, preferably. Imagine what it's like to swing a shovel for 5 hours a day, and especially with a break: get wet - cool down - get wet again, half a day in the cold. In the summer, too, work is not ice, remove garbage, breathe dust.

Yes, of course, the work is the most low-skilled, and it is clear that people do not go there for the sake of wealth. But every, every time ordinary Russian people surprise!

The main leitmotif of the comments under this petite note, as well as under hundreds of others, which indicate low income in some profession or social group, is this: “What are they complaining about, I work in a clinic / school / in a taxi, I also get little .. Let them not stick out!” There are also such commentators from the sect of the Holy Market on their backing: “Yes, but they themselves agreed to this work, let them shovel the snow with high quality, and so that right in the morning our yards would be clean!”

Here is an amazing country Russia. Unique in some way even. Here the bourgeois can be calm. Make plans to buy another jet or yacht and not even think about what will happen in Kazakhstan, Paris, the USA or even China.

The Russian people exist in some kind of surprisingly archaic paradigm "there is not enough, there is not enough for everyone, take what they give." The Russian people perceive the performance of any stratum for decent working conditions as follows: “Yeah, there is a certain amount in the bag of money. If these goats win more for themselves, then Dunka and I will get less.” Probably, these are remnants of the peasant consciousness, where land was the main value, and in conditions of agrarian overpopulation, indeed, the more mouths, the less land for each. Or endure hardships, or throw into the taiga.

But now not feudalism! Money is made differently, production is completely different. And still, people don't demand that everyone get at least $1,000, people demand that janitors don't get more nurses, even if they all have a salary of $400. In short, the level of claims of the Russian people is like in a joke about "God, gouge out one of my eyes, let the neighbor go completely blind".

No solidarity, no mutual assistance, no collective action, even if it's really bad. Be patient, otherwise they will take it away. Every time I write: Russia is a paradise for a capitalist with such a level of self-awareness of the working people..."