Tommy Hilfiger: Janitor wages are bad for business

Proving that treating your employees like Alec Baldwin treats his daughter is considered high fashion, Tommy Hilfiger has slashed the wages of its janitors from nearly $19 an hour to $8 an hour, and has fired its unionized cleaning contractor and replaced it with a non-union one.

I used to wear Tommy cologne. Now I'd rather wear Joy Behar's sweat.

This was originally covered in the NY Times, but you can only access the link through a subscription. This is the type of story that aggravates me. One, Hilfiger pulled in a whopping $14.5 million last year (in addition to the $66 million he snagged when the company was bought out by a private equity firm), while his janitors now make $8.00 an hour. Try paying for rent in NYC working a job at $8.00 an hour. Hell, try paying for rent in Buffalo working a job at $8.00 an hour. I made nearly $8.00 an hour cutting watermelons when I was 16, and that was 12 years ago! And I didn't have to wipe excess poop off of company toilets, either.

This is also posted at TNR. I might be feeling particularly outraged this morning, but I'm writing the Hilfiger company a letter. You can write them an email here if you'd like.

Hilfiger, if you read this blog (which I'm sure you do), you suck.