CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Party officials did not determine the pay rates for workers at either event, but janitorial staffers at the Democratic National Convention here earned slightly better money than janitors at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.
The Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, which manages the convention center and other public facilities in Charlotte, said it hired roughly 100 workers to help with the Democrats' event, paying them between $8 and $10 an hour.
The people pushing trash bins at the Republican National Convention earned the state's minimum wage of $7.67 an hour, and some of them also had to pay for their own uniforms.
Carolyn Walker told HuffPost she'd been cleaning the Tampa convention center for 13 years, and that her pay dropped from $8 to the minimum wage when the convention center farmed the work out to a subcontractor years ago. "It stinks, to tell you the truth," she said. "We work very hard."
Labor advocates often criticize subcontracting, saying it can lead to lower wages and that it subverts worker protections. In addition to the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority's workers, there were also several subcontractors doing janitorial work at the Charlotte Convention Center. Spokespeople for subcontractors declined to be interviewed or ignored requests; one subcontracted worker cleaning out trash bins said she earned $10 an hour.
Another subcontracted worker said she made $8 for cleaning bathrooms. She said others who had been hired by the convention center through a job fair were making more for similar work. "It's ridiculous," said the worker, who refused to give her name for fear of retribution. "I'm doing the same job as them. I said that to my boss." She said that her boss refused to talk about the pay issue further.
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