Democratic mayor Bill White, SEIU-affiliated janitors in Houston, and the Houston Police Department has conspired to teach me one more lesson in my ongoing campaign to edjumucate myself on labor in America, circa 2006. Those us who are not janitors can probably begin to imagine what a difficult job it can be, and janitors who clean the offices of Chevron, Shell, and Exxon Mobil were being paid $5.30 an hour (whereas, as Rep. Waxman says in this pdf of a letter, workers in Chicago and LA make upwards of $10/hour with benefits), had no health care, and were given just a couple of hours of work a day. When the decided to protest in the city streets, they reportedly got trampled by horses and thrown into jail where they spent the night on concrete floors.

Now we're hearing that the janitors have worked out a tentative three-year contract that raises the hourly wage by $2.65 over the course of the contract, establishes a $20/month single payer health care plan, gives them two weeks of vacation and six holidays a year.

I'm committed to thinking through American labor without an ideological bent, to assess the facts and its history with an open mind. But reality ain't making it easy. Five dollars and thirty cents an hour to keep the wheels of big economy spinning? No real way to address you and your family's health needs when even Americans with insurance still spend every dime to address the threat of something like cancer? Trampling other human beings in the streets for agitating for the resources that the oil company employees who occupy the offices they clean and maintain would consider pocket change? Getting a bit difficult to stay objective.