New Respect For Janitorial Workers
Though rarely seen, does it surprise you to learn that the Census Agency tells us that there are more than 70,000 janitorial or maintenance services with more than one million janitors in our country? Janitorial services has been an unchanging business for more than a score of years is now in dramatic change and has become apart of the Green revolution. Most of us have paid scant attention to this industry as the workers come and went in the middle of the night leaving a freshly cleaned office for the daytime workers who show up each morning. It could be said that the janitorial worker is the silent and forgotten segment of the American workforce.
In the last decade, the Green evolution has become extremely important imposing new expectations, mandates, and rules that our businesses must incorporate within the principles of environmentally-friendly guidelines. We should ask who will carry out all these new rules, mandates, and practices. These rules will not occur by rhetoric, regulation, or well-wishing. This profess will take a newly educated workforce to implement the duties of making schools, offices, and homes that are “Going Green.”
There’s now a newer and more important duty for janitorial services than the traditional sweeping, mopping, and emptying the trash. The new generation of janitors must now concern themselves with new Green products, new Green equipment, and host of new mandates. To reach to these new standards, janitorial services need more training than how to operate a scrubber or vacuum. They require greater training and certification to do the job right.
These are the custodians of public health at a different level than the medical world. It could be said that the custodians are the first line of defense in protecting the public health. Obviously, the medical world is the last line of defense in protecting our health.
Sanitation is the part of the puzzle. Chemical use is another factor that dramatically affects all of us who learn and work in janitor cleaned buildings. Bioaccumulation refers to the collective pollution in a building, and a part of that pollution is of human origin.
It is finally time to realize who are the people that “Bring the Green.” They are the long-forgotten workers also known as the custodians and janitors of the evening shift. It is a recognition long overdue to appreciate the people who work to keep our buildings clean or our health protected. Our Green theories become practice in the hands of these hard-working custodians.
Will is cost more? Probably. Is it worth the moderate cost it will take to graduate these workers from easy laborers to trained technicians capable of implementing the Green practices needed to protect our health as well as clean the building. I think these folks deserve the New Respect of co-workers in the promotion of your business success and your health.
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