Of Janitors and Kings

[Aviation Pro]

What's the saying about boxes?

Here's a picture of JPMorgan Chase's Bill Maher look-a-like of a CEO. Apparently, he has good hair and a Harvard MBA, but then again so does Two Shoes McFuckstick.



Of Janitors and Kings

By BOB HERBERT

Martha Escobar is staring into the cold, dark, unforgiving eyes of destitution.

Ms. Escobar is one of 16 janitors who were laid off from their jobs at a luxury complex in Los Angeles that houses some of the wealthiest tenants imaginable. JPMorgan Asset Management, a unit of the vast JPMorgan Chase empire, manages an intricate investment web that owns the buildings. The layoffs were ordered by a maintenance contractor, ABM Industries.

The Century Plaza Towers, which is part of the complex, crows on its Web site that it has “one of the most prestigious tenant rosters in the country, which includes some of America’s most prominent business leaders.” The janitors were required to keep things pristine for those prominent business leaders, who hardly ever noticed them.

They also did the mopping and scrubbing at 2000 Avenue of the Stars, which also is part of the complex and is home to an array of glittering businesses, including the Creative Artists Agency, an entertainment and sports powerhouse. The janitors were let go a few weeks ago, and, given the current job market, they have not been able to do much since then but suffer with anxiety.

Ms. Escobar is 41 years old and has two daughters, 14 and 10. She told me, through an interpreter, that she had enough money to pay September’s rent but not October’s. She has no savings. School is about to start, but she has no idea how she will pay for her girls’ uniforms.

“I have not been able to find another job,” she said.

What’s different about these layoffs is that the janitors are not going quietly. They have been vigorously protesting the callousness of their treatment — the way the rich people who employed them for the munificent sum of $13.50 an hour found it so easy to dump them on the scrap heap with the rest of America’s unemployed millions.

The janitors have marched and fasted outside the buildings they once cleaned. And Ms. Escobar and another laid-off janitor, Elba Polanco, were brought to New York City last week by the Service Employees International Union, which represents them, to bring their plight to the attention of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Dimon has made a fabulous living by, among other things, borrowing enormous sums of money to buy companies and then hurling people out of work.

[libmom74]

1. I truly hate

these greedy bastards who have absolutley no regard whatsover for their fellow human beings and I hate to admit it but I wouldn't be sad if people got fed up and went "French revolution" on them. How much longer are the people of this nation going to put up with the "Let them eat cake?" attitude?