[lbo-talk] Ehrenreich responds to BDL

[Kelley]

At 06:33 AM 8/22/03 -0400, Michael Pollak scribbled:
>at the pay rates are.
>
>The figures refer to what proportion of cleaning people are employed 
>by a
>service that takes a cut.  (She says 6 out of 7 are not.  Her
>participation observation represents the work experience of the 1 out 
>of 7
>who are.  IMHO, it should be generalized with that in mind.)  The 
>figure
>for pay ($20/hr) was taken from Wojtek's post, where he said the 
>problem
>was not the rate of pay but the size of the services' cut.  I said 
>that of
>course for 6/7 who don't work for services, there is no such cut.  I
>assumed that whatever the market rate, it would be the same for 
>both.  I
>was making no claims about what that rate was in general.

in other words, you didn't read the book. check


>As for the rate of pay of domestics in New York, that's based on my 
>asking
>everyone I knew how much they paid when I finally decided to hire 
>someone.
>I knwo anyone who was paying less than $50 to get their apartment 
>cleaned;
>the median was $60.  In my case, it takes two hours.  I'm sure other
>people's take longer.  I was using those figures because this is the 
>only
>market I know anything about personally.

which is why i said: how could you possibly know?


>As for comparisons to upstate, your figures make comparative sense.

in other words, the pay of $20/hr sucks. what i said.

Kelley