We Can’t Restore Our Country If We Underpay the Folks Restoring Our Buildings

/in /by

The lowest paid full time employees at the White House–Christopher Liegel and Elizabeth Jackson–make $37,826 and $37,983 respectively (they’re both “Records Management Analysts”). They presumably also get those great benefits federal employees make.

After those two, the lowest paid people in the White House (specifically, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds) are a bunch of craftsmen restoring the stonework in EEOB. If they work full time this year, they’ll make $39,270 for skilled work. And they get no healthcare benefits. All in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

That’s because the General Services Administration working for a Democratic President hired a non-union contractor to do the second phase of this project. The union workers who did the first phase of this project–under George Bush–made something closer to $60,000 a year, plus benefits (the median salary at the White House is $66,000 a year).

Now, I realize I might get branded as a member of the Professional Left for complaining about this.

But shouldn’t the guys working in the White House get paid in the same range as the staffers working in the White House? Shouldn’t a President fighting to make sure all Americans have health care ensure those working just outside his own window–working on the offices of his Vice President and others–have health care?

We will not get out of this recession until wages stop falling. And one way to ensure that happens is to make sure skilled craftsmen get paid a viable wage. Apparently, we have to start that fight right on White House grounds.

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      • Mary says:

        My first Va Sup Ct brief many years back had Supreme misspelled on the Cover Page. I never thought to proof it since the firm had templates for all that. I noticed it after I got back from walking it over and immediately rushed back with new covers. They absolutely should not have allowed me to touch it after it was filed, but I think I looked 12 and ready to cry at the time, so he did.

  2. SmileySam says:

    I have been a skilled craftsman most of my life. I installed flooring for over 30 yrs and was never in the Union. That is not to say I didn’t make good money because I did. It was the Unions that used to keep the wages for everyone high enough to live on. Because I worked piece work I basically set my own wage. We didn’t take the Union mandated breaks, or long lunch breaks, if we broke for lunch at all. We went to work early, worked our asses off until the job was done and then went home. Most times I made double what a Union Installer did but without the benefits or Pension.

    When I first went into the business I tried to get into the Union but was told I would have to move to Los Angeles for a couple yrs but even then there was no promise I would become a apprentice unless I had family in the Union also, which I didn’t have. Over the yrs a couple times I worked for a split shop, one with both Union and non-union installers. For the most part the Union workers got the easier jobs and even then they resented those of us that did the harder jobs yet got off earlier and made more money. Our incentive was that we didn’t need to work a 40 hr week to make our living so we had no reason to slow the job down. We got paid the same thing whether the job took 8hrs or 4hrs so we made sure we got it done in 4 hrs when possible and that way we were sitting in the bar, already paid and happy while a union worker found a way to slowly load their truck until the whistle blew. Over the yrs this kind of behavior by the Union cost them their hold over the industry. Once Piece work became the norm the only places they worked were gov. contracts and what few straight union jobs left on the West Coast.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I respect the Unions and what they did for the workers back in the day but they can no longer automatically expect to be hired when the Contractors know how long a job should take vs the time it takes a Union Crew to do the same work. As I got older and moved into Sales in Las Vegas where the Union still owns the Strip work, the horror stories of Union workers showing up without any tools, not showing up, or poor quality work were so common they became a standing joke.
    I still wish I had become a Union Man back in the day. If I had I could of retired with a Pension way before my back and knees went. I don’t know about back East but in SoCal. and Vegas, the Unions did themselves in.
    Btw, since most Gov. jobs require prevailing wages be paid, the jobs in the WH should be being done by the Unions. If they aren’t making decent money it is the Union Bosses fault not the White Houses.

  3. PAR4 says:

    When did this President fight for all Americans getting health care? All I remember is a year and a half wasted on a bill that mandates Americans to buy overpriced crap from for profit insurance companies.

    • seaglass says:

      Which is what he wanted and had already sold us all out to get from day 1! What I resent deeply is how he and his handlers and the Dimocrats purposely IMO put on this long horse and pony show to try and convince all of us other wise. Why? because it they had just told us up front ,look we sold out to the same friggin companies that are crushing u right now with policies u can’t afford and drug prices that are obnoxious for no reason you’d all be really pissed off. The truth was, and many folks said it here from the start, Obama and his pals and the Corporatist elite of the Dimocrats had already made their deals behind the scenes even before the election in 2008 on this one. Nobody was getting anything unless it garnished the bottom line of these same thieves. They OWNED the issue from the start. So much for change.Oh and forget about hope.

  4. PJEvans says:

    “Records Management Analysts” – they’re file clerks. If I understand title inflation correctly.

    That’s not a lot of money, but I’ve been paid less than that for 40-hour jobs (and people with a lot more years than me were also getting not enough money to pay for medical for their kids, and had to have aid).

    As for unions – the idea is great, but a lot of them seem to have turned into job-insurance mechanisms: protecting people from the consequences of doing their work badly, and keeping out people who want to get jobs that pay decent wages and wonn’t disappear at the end of the year. (Don’t even ask about the ones that prevent people from being fired for cause.)

  5. qweryous says:

    It’s a good thing that the current Democratic administration is not beholden to the unions- after all who could the unions vote for…?

    The Gibblet or Rahmster doing skilled (or in their case unskilled) construction work outside in the Washington heat- not to mention Dr. Gruber-
    could they make it to lunch?

    They could tell their coworkers that unemployment benefits are welfare,that Social Security is next to be wrecked looted improved and by the way you’d better count on working to 75 years of age for the good of the investment banks.

    The bit about needing to cut government spending to pay off everyone else will also work well as a conversation item.

    They could do a town hall while waiting for the jobsite executive washroom.

  6. prostratedragon says:

    What would be the GSA excuse for not paying health care benefits (for physical workers, no less)? ‘Cause they can?

      • prostratedragon says:

        Bet that typically translates to shifting them to some other taxpayer pocket.

        Tunnel vision counts for entirely too much in this world.

        • BoxTurtle says:

          Technically, yeah. It shifts the costs to the workers pocket and you can bet the feds are taking their cut of the workers paychecks, so they’re taxpayers.

          Boxturtle (Take comfort, Pres. Scrooge. The workhouses are only technically closed and the prisons are operating just fine)

  7. pdaly says:

    We will not get out of this recession until wages stop falling. And one way to ensure that happens is to make sure skilled craftsmen get paid a viable wage.

    It’s a good reason for bringing back the public option, too.

    That is, make $39,270/year a viable wage by making health care affordable.

    (and yes, Pres. Obama, I wrote ‘health care’ not ‘health care insurance’).

  8. JohnLopresti says:

    There are some pretty amazing buildings in WA-DC, many in a neo-heroic style. I recall my amaze as a child climbing marble stairs whose treads were scallopped deeply from many footfalls. I wonder what level of skill is required for replacement of palace-style sculpture. I thought of the NPR biographical video of a family known in Europe for daring restorations of buildings* external gargoyles; link difficult to locate. I doubt WA-DC cornices bear mundane antique gargoyles.

    • prostratedragon says:

      I wonder what level of skill is required for replacement of palace-style sculpture.

      I’ve actually been looking around a bit during odd moments this pm. Haven’t found more than hints regarding the training of the line craftspeople, but those hints involve the use of specialized cleaning agents (one firm boasts of the use of finely ground diamonds in one of its polishers), and offers to teach clients and their staffs to do the routine maintenance tasks. So I guess one can enter the trade from a variety of starting points.

      Another clue comes from thinking about some other restoration jobs. One big job of which I’m somewhat familiar with the ‘before’ end is the Cathedral Church of St. John the Unfinished;), in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Some of the articles at the link include photos conveying a sense of the scale of the restorative effort, both in size and in the special skills —and nerve!— involved. The article on the tapestry restoration has a slide show attached.

      I can attest that before the recent job, the interior was a quite dark brownish-gray. Since completion it seems that frequent visitors have discovered entire sculptural features for the first time, so in a fairly old building the potential for added value from proper restoration could be significant. The CC of SJD and the EEOB were begun in roughly the same era.

      (Btw, does anyone know of a good set of pictures of the EEOB? I’ve never seen more than the exterior, either in print or person.)

      • jimhicks3 says:

        I am also somewhat familiar with the St. John the Devine work. I did the window replacement in the building that houses the tapestry – although I’m not union all the work done was with union carpenters.
        Also I’ve done a bunch of work that requires prevailing wage (Davis – Bacon act). Even if the contract is let out to a non union company if there is fed or state money for the project D/B comes into effect and you have to provide certified payroll.
        So unless the project in question privately funded something is fishy about the whole thing. Non union isn’t the issue.
        j3

    • JohnLopresti says:

      ew*s photo is reminiscient of the image I visualized when the tired but kindly ex-general Ike uttered his paternal warning about the military-industrial complex in remarks tinted strongly by the perspective of a president in a tapering second-term lameduck part of his administration.

      Call it military-industrial utilitarian architecture style. Maybe I can check with some of the architect folks I have met for the precise docent term. As a starting point, it is known that if one has sufficient sheetrocking work in a plain vanilla building covered by government construction standards, and if regs permit outside contractors for such chores if the installation quality meets the strict standards, and if one enlists the proper sequence of variously certified inspectors to scrutinize plans, materials proposed, and to examine the work in progress and after completion, for compliance with the regs, it is substantially less costly from a project management perspective to import caravans of sheetrockers from a right-to-work state than to hire locals from the union halls. I suspect the existing union contracts already onsite have addressed much more than those factors; perhaps ew has found an indication of some flawed contract language, though that would surprise me, having worked on such contracts extensively. Unions usually foresee this stuff, and ban it in explicit terms of their contracts. However, it might be of concern if the either compliant or noncompliant outsourcing were to approximate one of the $1,275. coffeemaker scandals one senator revealed a few decades back.

  9. BoxTurtle says:

    Why are we paying them? Let’s offer them three MRE’s a day. As long as the economy is in the tank, we should be able to get a full crew.

    Boxturtle (And undocumented workers would be even cheaper)

  12. MadDog says:

    And more OT – Via SCOTUSblog:

    Judges move quickly on Prop. 8 Briefing schedule on stay issue

    A motions panel of the Ninth Circuit Court on Friday set a fast schedule for reviewing a plea to put on hold, for several months, a federal judge’s ruling striking down California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. In a scheduling order (2 page PDF), the panel ordered briefing completed by Monday morning — a little more than two days before the ruling would go into effect if it were not postponed…

  13. MadDog says:

    And even more OT – Via Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic:

    Pentagon Wants to Secure Dot.Com Domains of Contractors

    To better secure unclassified information stored in the computer networks of government contractors, the Defense Department is asking whether the National Security Agency should begin to monitor select corporate dot.com domains, several officials and consultants briefed on the matter said.

    Under the proposal, which is being informally circulated throughout the department and the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA could set up equipment to look for patterns of suspicious traffic at the internet service providers that the companies’ networks run through. The agency would immediately notify the Pentagon and the companies if pernicious behavior were detected. The Agency would not directly monitor the content of the data streams, only its meta-data. (A Pentagon spokesperson called later to clarify that it would not be legal for the NSA to “monitor” private networks; rather, “DoD and NSA are seeking to provide technical advice, expertise and information to the defense industrial base…”)

    [snip]

    …It may not be legal to force companies to submit to NSA monitoring, or even to ask them to voluntarily agree to it, and it might not be politically feasible for companies to accept NSA sensors without disclosing their existence for liability and optical reasons. At least two companies, AT&T and Verizon, have been approached about the idea, government officials said. Representatives for both companies checked with the Pentagon after receiving inquiries and declined to comment…

    • fatster says:

      MadDog, am I understanding this correctly, that they plan to get inside the companies’ networks and monitor traffic there? And there is legal protection against their doing that? Meanwhile, we have no legal protection against their hoovering all our emails and internet activities 24/7? What a deal.

      Thnx.

  14. Leen says:

    “The union workers who did the first phase of this project–under George Bush–made something closer to $60,000 a year, plus benefits (the median salary at the White House is $66,000 a year).”

    http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/webfeatures_econindicators_income_20080826/

    So 39,ooo for skilled workers. What do you think they bring home after taxes? 29? Then you have to pay for some health care or not. Not much to pay rent or bank payments, food, day care, vehicle insurance, gas etc.

    Great catch ew. Damn straight they should be getting the prevailing union wage along with health benefits.
    ———————————————————-

    Awhile back union wages came up for discussion here at EW’s place. I had just been at the Green Festival in D.C. I believe it was held at the Washington Convention Center. Anyway as I went around talking mostly to African Americans who were taking care of the door operations, cleaning, setting up etc. I asked about 8 people working if they were union members, how much they were working and if they had health care. Almost everyone I talked with were making $14.oo an hour(union jobs) had two jobs and had to pay a at least a couple hundred dollars a month for health care.

    Many grandmothers also taking care of their grandchildren working those jobs.

      • Leen says:

        Not a good sign when similar work being done by workers under the Bush administration’s reign were making more. Ouch

      • lareineblanche says:

        this country is toast
        Well, it depends on how you define “this country”.
        If you define it as the ever-dwindling circle of concentration of capital (and therefore power), it’s doing great.
        If you define it as the rest of the population inside the US borders, yes, we’re toast – but sans importance.
        If you define it as the US empire, yes, it is probably “toast” in the next 20 to 30 years.

        There is a caste system in the US between “manual” labor and “intellectual” labor (though it is very difficult to justify the term “intellectual” in many cases), and to ignore it is foolish.

  18. larrythedirtyhippy says:

    So I guess those paid applauders at Obama’s AFL-CIO speech a few days ago were non-union paid applauders.

    • Leen says:

      Hey you “retarded, professional lefty, dirty hippie” move on, next chapter, turn the page all ready

  20. textynn says:

    This is so typical. Millions of people across this nation work in highly skilled jobs only to be paid like peons and given no health care. This story is a prime example of the complete and total hypocrisy of lawmakers and their elite serving policies that serve the hardest working people of this nation up like so many farm animals. This is a travesty and a tragedy on so many levels.

  21. susiedow says:

    Here’s a scary question. Are any of those workers collecting some form of assistance (food stamps, etc)?

  22. jodo says:

    And 84 percent of Federal stimulus money for green technology manufacturing jobs is going to China and other low wage countries.

  23. JohnLopresti says:

    It turns out easy to learn the eeob has had a somewhat controversial architectural background, and as noted in a commenter*s remarks above, a lengthy history. An Ike commission actually tried to demolish it. Restoration of the structure has become a substantial project emphasis.

    I was wondering if some portion of the low paid posts described might be sourced from stimulus funding; and, whether the stimulus legislation included some narrow exemptions from wage guidelines.

    Given the records management turmoil in the prior administration, perhaps the two employment positions described represent PRA compliance improvements.

  24. flory says:

    In 1978 I was making just under $11,000 as a very low paid federal employee. $37,826 works out to a 3.99% average annual increase since then.

    Inflation has averaged 7.9% since then. Even at $66,000 the increase is less than inflation — 5.82%.