Students Against Sweatshops 'cause more harm than good'

With the writing of the article "A Janitor's Life" (Nov. 29) and with the most recent UBSAS rally (Nov. 30) the Justice for Janitors campaign has been drawing a lot of attention. While it is admirable that students want their custodial staff members to earn a decent wage, UB Students Against Sweatshops cause more harm than good. Last semester UBSAS began their Justice for Janitors campaign to get "the university to switch from underpaid contracted janitors to unionized workers who receive fair pay and benefits."

The university is changing their policy, but it is not within their power to give the contracted workers a union, so they have to lay off the non-unionized workers. Of course UBSAS hadn't planned on costing people their jobs, but they did, and now they are rallying to save their jobs; interesting turn of events. UBSAS needs to think their actions through, especially since other rallies have involved dumping garbage on the ground (who will clean that?) and putting quarter sheets at every seat in large lecture halls (that's a lot of extra trash for someone to clean isn't it?). So this campaign may have had good intentions, but it is costing jobs and causing extra work, way to go UBSAS.