Big Movie Theater Chains are exploiting their janitors. - Sensationalist Headlines

https://variety.com/2019/biz/features/movie-theater-janitor-exploitation-1203170717/?fbclid=IwAR3TGZgQae4-mfjeylsEUIc2uxicvCofga9eKY92VVmjynl7FuKAWzM-P7o Every night, after the last show ended at the AMC theater in Santa Monica, Maria Alvarez arrived at work. She and her husband had a key to let themselves in. It was after midnight, and the building was empty. Together, they cleaned all seven auditoriums. They vacuumed the carpets and mopped the floors. They cleaned the bathrooms and restocked the toilet paper. They polished the escalators and scrubbed the glass concession cases. They finished after sunrise. On weekends, when the theaters were especially dirty, they stayed later, until 9:30 a.m. Alvarez worked seven days a week. There were no days off, no sick days, no holidays. “The day my son passed away, I asked for the day, and they did not want to give it to me,” she said through tears during a labor hearing in 2017. The major chains — AMC, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark — no longer rely on teenage ushers to keep the floors from getting sticky. Instead, they have turned to a vast immigrant workforce, often hired through layers of subcontractors. That arrangement makes it almost impossible for janitors to make a living wage. Alvarez got hurt on the job, and a doctor recommended a lighter workload. When she made that request in April 2015, she was fired. The following year, she filed a California Labor Commission claim for unpaid wages, including overtime. The hearing officer awarded her $80,000 in back pay and penalties. But Alvarez could not collect. She did not work directly for AMC or its janitorial contractor, ACS Enterprises, which shielded them from liability. Instead, she worked for a couple — Alfredo Dominguez and Caritina Diaz — who had not even shown up to the hearing. Even Dominguez and Diaz didn’t consider her an actual employee. In their minds, she was a contractor of a contractor of a contractor of AMC Theatres. AMC and ACS did send an attorney to fight her wage claim. In the end, the companies agreed to pay her $3,500 to go away. There is a lot more in the article as they go into full detail about this but man this is just down right disgusting.

Janitors, the job that is critically important literally everywhere yet one that is rarely respected by practically anyone.

I wish there could be a general strike so they could see how the world is without someone to clean up their filth

Not janitors, but I remember my parents telling me about how, in the UK, some binmen went on strike in the 80's (? I'm unsure, so take that date with a pinch of salt ?), and the immediate aftermath is exactly what you would've expected; people realised how much they needed binmen, since filth would pile up and there was no one to deal with it. Shame it was only short-term and that classism is still rampant over here.

I do hate that part of this world, how the people who make up the bottom layers of a company get shit on to no end, when their jobs are pretty important to maintaining those above them, I mean I imagine a cinema would get pretty gross after a couple of days without being cleaned, to the point where people would find somewhere else to, see the higher up manage that shit themselves, they'll just try and force people to clean that shit up or hire someone who will, while still treating them like shit, it's disgusting. Were these people born arseholes or did they just end up becoming that way?

Probably a fairly even mixture of both. Some start out as good but gradually become corrupted, others are just inherently evil from the very beginning.

Ended up this way since they can have them on call all the time and don't have to worry about labor laws like with teens. Also, almost every low skill job is going to temp agencies because the company doesn't have to deal with any benefits for the worker. And they get to fire or remove a worker when they are finished with them without having to say, "you're fired," to your face. Everything is about off loading the risk and training onto the worker and wanting all of the benefits from said worker without proper compensation.

For real mad respect to Janitors, cart pushers and window washers. They work shitty jobs and no one fucking cares about them and its really painful.

Always be polite to any janitors that you see. Those people are fucking heroes and deserve not only respect, but a pay raise for the shit they have to deal with.

You know people talk shit about 'gong farmers' when talking about the past but without them, human society would have straight up collapsed.

hey yet another instance of contractor law being massively abused! fucking hell even if we ever fixed healthcare, the core corporate laws of our country absolutely screw workers left right and center and its all by design. Everything from shell companies, LLCs to contractor laws to the NLRB need massive reform

Simple workers are always associated with being stupid incompetent or crude yet they are literally holding fucking everything together.

At my theater, which had 18 very large screens (200 to 450 people per screen) only 2 janitors would show up at night. They would be there around 11:30ish and sometimes be there to 9. When I worked as an usher (Then later manager) our boss always made sure we cleaned as much as we could to make their job easier. But on big opening weekends the amount of mess people would make was astonishing. And because we squeezed shows together so close, we could get everything from under the seats and aisles. The fucking worst nights were big kids movies. I remember when Despicable Me 2 was out, its was like every kid had a large bucket, didn't eat ANY of it, and just dumped it on the floor. For all 400 seats. It took us 7 trashcans to get most of it out of there. But the floor in front of all the seats was covered in butter and soda. Couldn't clean it in time because shows were so close together and we (the floor staff) were constantly understaffed.

If Mike Rowe taught us anything it's that - There are people who aren't afraid to get dirty, hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us. There are a lot of jobs people turn their noses up too, there are people who work these job, and people look at them as they're beneath them. Fuck those people who think that, seriously.

If a wooden staff manufacturing plant runs out of employees and wooden staffs simultaneously, are they understaffed?

Theaters have been managing to screw over their employees for a long time. Serious lobbying power is reflected in the books - theater workers are exempt from overtime pay requirements at a federal level.

What a great fucking show that was.

Movie theater companies fucking suck. I worked for one after being sold on it by a family member who claimed it was "Easy work" where you "just sit around doing nothing". While it was easier than working at walmart or spending all day doing heavy lifting, it was hardly easy work. I worked at the counter and the place had like 7 jobs melded in to one. I had to take customer's orders, make popcorn (and special flavored popcorn), get drinks, cook entire meals, tear tickets, restock, clean, and deal with any customer complaints, usually as the only member on staff. Even weekdays weren't easy, there would still be a couple big rushes a day but they would inevitably send the one other coworker I had in the entire fuckin building home because "we didn't need them", just before a rush. It wouldn't even be that bad except what's normally a light sized rush across 3 or 4 employees becomes a big fucking problem when you're the ONLY person on staff, and everyone feels like ordering 4 fucking meals for them and their kids. There would be times where I'd be literally sprinting to try to keep up. Fuck that, man.