New York - On Wall Street there is an economic indicator that is found not in the financial pages but on the pavement. Cigarette butts. The longer the butt, the better the times.
In this cycle of fiscal uncertainty, it appears that people are feeling the squeeze. They are smoking their cigarettes down to the filters. It is not the brokers or bond traders who are noticing this trend. It is the people who spend their days picking up after the crown princes of capitalism.
It is the people who sweep the foyers, clean the smoking lounges and empty the ashtrays who notice the finer details in waste.
Wall Street has been wild in recent months, and the economy has been limping along. When there is a financial downturn, among the first to feel it are those who work in the service industries. The prognostication from the working class on the Street is that while there is a pinch, it is moderate, and they do not expect to be standing on the unemployment line anytime soon.
Still, the cigarette butts have gotten shorter and the office keepers at 20 Broad Street, home of the New York Stock Exchange, have gotten nervous. Less tobacco portends less trash, fewer floors, fewer hours and less money. "We got to punch a time clock," said Cesar Meza, who has been scrubbing the toilets at 20 Broad for 11 years. "If the people move out, then the number of floors you clean are less. When the floor is lost you lose the hours. Then you worry about the rent. I got a tight feeling." Four
o'clock is the hour when the pink and white collars file out of the financial district. They walk past the blue collars, who go into the basement locker rooms to change into their uniforms and begin the workday.
Stella Payan has been pushing a trash bin for the last 13 years at the New York Stock Exchange. As a member of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 45 000 workers in the metropolitan area, Payan earns $16,43 an hour and has a pension and medical benefits.
"I walk into work, and I see the market is down 300," she said as she slipped into her work sneakers. "I see the people's faces and I don't have envy for them. I have pity. They seem so dark."
She cleans 4 000 square feet an hour, as negotiated by contract, and no more. That is 32 000 square feet in an eight-hour shift. She lost a floor seven months ago because the company consolidated and moved some offices to cheaper quarters. The move cost Payan an hour a day, $82,15 a week. "I'm not worried," she said.
"The market goes up, and the market goes down. I work on Wall Street, so I hear that in the long run that my portfolio should be fine."
Office cleaners at the stock exchange say they would actually welcome a reduction in the number of white-collar workers, since in the last five years, more desks have been crammed into the same amount of space. "We got more work at the same pay," Meza said. "It hasn't been fair to the working people." - NY Times News Service