“I’m glad they’re happy,” said my sister-in-law during our weekly conversational English session.
She was speaking of the executives in the building where she cleans. As a recent immigrant, office cleaner was one of the few jobs in Canada she could find. Working for minimum wage, where every minute is accounted for, she sometimes watches in awe as the young business men and women around her enjoy their lives.
“They like to eat,” she told me, explaining that caterers bring in food for these hungry office workers each and every day. There’s apparently an endless supply of pastries, sandwiches and coffee (which makes me wonder, what kind of company is this??)
“They’re always laughing. They must really enjoy their work,” she said, smiling. “I’m happy for them.” There may have been some sarcasm in her voice, but I know she holds nothing against those who have well paid office jobs.
She could be talking about any office environment, although this one sounds particularly swanky. Anyone who sits at a desk all day, at least compared to those in the service industry, may appear to live in a worker's paradise. They partake in coffee breaks, business lunches and watercooler chats. They might even have the occasional nerf gun battle. (I will reluctantly admit this may be a reference to my workplace when, for one glorious year, we had a young, cool boss who emulated Google's approach to encouraging productivity: making the office fun.)
Now to be fair to office workers, there has to be the occasional break from sitting at a desk all day. Having a nerf gun battle for a few minutes to break up the monotony of endless spreadsheets does focus one’s mind.
But if you’re a lowly cleaner? No such opportunities exist. You definitely don’t want to be caught holding a nerf gun. You must work even harder because the sad reality is, your work is valued less. Because you never had the same educational opportunities or, like my sister-in-law, you just escaped from a war-torn country, you must work harder for a fraction of the pay.
As her son would jokingly say, “Welcome to capitalism!”
I don’t want to create the impression that my sister-in-law complains about her situation (nor does our nephew complain about capitalism – in fact, he would love to own more capital himself). She’s happy to be in a country where she’s safe with her family. But if I put myself in her shoes, I can imagine how I’d feel giving up my office job to clean offices.
Prior to the war in Ukraine, my sister-in-law worked for the Ukrainian federal government as a director in the tax revenue department (similar to the CRA in Canada). In Ukraine, however, having an office job doesn’t mean you can partake in endless pastries and water cooler chats. Endowed with the Ukrainian work ethic, she normally worked long unpaid overtime hours.
Her salary was typical of Ukrainian government workers – not extravagant by any means, but enough to pay the bills. While she makes more as a cleaner in Canada, her pay cheque doesn’t go as far given our higher cost of living.
How anyone can make a living off a service job in Canada is beyond me. In a time of elevated inflation, minimum wage jobs haven’t kept pace across Canada. The pay of top executives, by contrast, continues to increase.
This has been well publicized, but Canada’s top 100 CEOs now make 250 times more than the average worker. In my humble opinion, I would suggest it's unlikely any corporate leader has ever made that much of a difference for a company other than maybe Steve Jobs. But even Apple, a company now worth $3.5 trillion, has done pretty well since their seemingly irreplaceable founder and CEO died in 2011. Tim Cook, the steady-as-she-goes replacement, made ten times more money for Apple than Jobs ever did.
But you don’t even need to be successful as a CEO. Even those who fail miserably get compensated upon their dismissal. They are somehow that valuable.
If only we treated all workers with this much respect. They, too, could be very happy.
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