Business Spotlight: Working with Veterans

Teresa Emerson says 70 percent of Clearview’s business is cleaning commercial buildings such as Juanita K. Hammons Hall. Working with veterans tips the scale for a woman-owned window-cleaning firm in governor’s award.

Business Spotlight: The Cleanup Crew - Working with veterans tips the scale for a woman-owned window-cleaning firm in governor’s award. Teresa Emerson never thought she would run a window-cleaning business. But two days before earning her MBA from Drury University, the telecommunications veteran put her college knowledge to use with the 1995 purchase of Clearview Window Cleaning from David and Debbie Morris. “About three days later, I was hanging doing high-rise work,” says Emerson, who worked in the field a few years in the early days as a small-business owner.

Now 20 years in, the work of Emerson’s crew is seen in the shiny clean windows of such major commercial clients as CoxHealth, Mercy, City Utilities of Springfield and Missouri State University, as well as area storefronts and homes.  Her commitment to growth and the hiring of veterans and active military personnel even earned her recognition from Gov. Jay Nixon in early September. It’s all in a day’s work for Clearview.

Nixon’s nod; On Sept. 3, Emerson traveled to St. Louis for the 2015 Governor’s Conference on Economic Development. One of 10 honors presented by Nixon, Clearview earned the Governor’s Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year Award. Nominated by a Springfield peer, Emerson visited St. Louis, met the governor and gave a speech thanking her employees. “It was a very odd feeling. I’m usually not much on awards,” she says. “They tend to focus on the moment in time. This is 20 years in the making. It made me think of all the technicians who have worked here over the years who have just been great people.”

In presenting the award, the governor noted Clearviews employment growth to 15 window-cleaning technicians and three support staff from just three employees when she took over in the mid-1990s. “I think they want to see that you are creative in the way that you keep your business rolling,” she says. Nixon, who started the Show-Me Heroes campaign in 2010 to encourage business owners to hire active military personnel and veterans, also credited Emerson’s commitment to that cause. Of her 15 technicians, seven are Missouri veterans, active in the military or members of the National Guard or Reserve.

Emerson wouldn’t have it any other way. It doesn’t hurt the state’s Show-Me Heroes program provides on the job training assistance – reimbursing 50 percent of wages for new employees – and facilitates federal work opportunity tax credits, which can range up to $9,600 for hiring individuals who face employment barriers. But Emerson says the main advantage is the work ethic instilled in service members, as well as their commitment to teamwork and adherence to safety guidelines.

Not all employers hold service members in that regard. “Believe it or not, it can be very difficult for a veteran or somebody in the military looking for a job,” says James Wittman, a five-year Clearview employee and an active Army Reserve member. Wittman says he’s observed employers pass over workers who list active military duty on their resumes. Calls of duty may come in a matter of hours, which can put a business in a pinch. A team leader for Clearview, Wittman says Emerson is understanding of his sergeant responsibilities to the Harrison, Ark.-based Army unit. “I don’t have to worry a bit,” Wittman says about the Army’s occasional short notice for personnel.

Shine on: Hanging from rigs, climbing ladders and using other equipment, Emerson’s crew performs about 70 percent commercial jobs and 30 percent residential, a complete flip from when she bought the business. Clearview’s work takes technicians as far as Ft. Leonard Wood, Parsons, Kan., eastern Oklahoma and Eureka Springs, Ark.

Large office jobs range widely from $300 to $3,000. Homes, which largely comprise jobs for working couples, tend to average $200. The company’s 600-700 clients may only use its services once or twice a year, but some are as often as weekly. Declining to disclose revenues, Emerson says sales increased roughly 5 percent last year, and she projects a 12 percent rise this year.

Ronnie Lightfoot, CoxHealth system director for support services, says the health system has contracted with Clearview for his seven years with the company. The contract is renewed every three years, and Lightfoot says Clearview gets the edge in the bidding process because of a commitment to pristine buildings and a systematic rotation. “When you see workers hanging off the buildings, that’s her team maintaining our windows,” Lightfoot says. “If there’s a facility we own, they maintain the windows for us.”

For Cox South’s recently completed patient tower, Clearview was brought on board to perform construction cleanup work, a growing source of revenue for the company. Lightfoot says Clearview’s employees are trained in Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and they take on jobs needing specialized lifts and tools to clean out-of-reach places. At Cox South, Clearview was the final piece of the puzzle after the contractors and engineers finished, essentially completing the final polishes. “It’s kind of like getting up and getting showered and all ready, and she’ll be putting makeup on the building,” Lightfoot says.

Working Too Hard?

Window cleaners hang from their lines as they clean an office building in Washington, September 1. Working too hard leads to strokes, diabetes and heart disease. Why are we killing ourselves?

Why Can’t We Enjoy A Three-Day Weekend Every Weekend? As we enjoy the Labor Day weekend, it is worth reassessing the amount of time we devote to work. What if all weekends could last for three or even four days? What if the majority of the week could be given over to activities other than work? What if most of our time could be devoted to non-work activities of our own choosing?

To even pose these questions is to invite the criticism of Utopian thinking. While a fine idea in principle, working fewer hours is not feasible in practice. Indeed, its achievement would come at the expense of lower consumption and increased economic hardship.

For some advocates of the work ethic, the route to health and happiness lies with the perpetuation of work, not with its reduction. Work makes us healthier and happier. Such pro-work ideology is used to legitimate welfare reforms that seek to coerce the non-employed into work, whatever its rates of pay and qualitative features. It also offers an ideological barrier to the case for spending less time at work. Working less is presented as a threat to our health and happiness, not a means to improve it.

Yet, the idea of working less is not only feasible, it is also the basis for a better standard of life. It is a mark of how we have come to accept work and its dominant influence in our lives that we do not grasp this idea more readily.

The costs of working more: A growing number of studies show the human costs of longer working hours. These include lower physical and mental health. Working long hours can add to the risk of having a stroke, coronary heart disease and developing type 2 diabetes.

By working most of the time, we also lose time with family and friends. And more than this we lose the ability to be and do things that make life valuable and worth living. Our lives are often too much tied up in the work we do that we have little time and energy to find alternative ways of living – in short, our capacity to realize our talents and potential is curtailed by the work we do. Work does not set us free, rather it hems us in and makes it more difficult to realise ourselves.

All this speaks to the need to work less. We should challenge the work ethic and promote alternative ways of living that are less work centered. And, if this reduction of time spent at work is focused on eliminating drudge work then we can also better realize the internal benefits of work itself. Working less may be a means not only to work better but also to enjoy life more.

Barriers to less work: Technological progress has advanced continuously over the past century, pushing up productivity. But not all the gains in productivity have fed through to shorter work hours. At least in modern times, these gains have been used to increase the returns of the owners of capital, often at the cost of flatlining pay for workers.

The lack of progress in reducing time spent at work in modern capitalist economies reflects instead the influence of ideology as well as of power. On the one hand, the effects of consumerism have created powerful forces in favor of longer working hours. Workers are constantly persuaded to buy more and in turn are drawn into working more, to keep up with the latest fad or fashion and to stay ahead of their peers.

On the other hand, the weakened power of labor relative to capital has created an environment that has suited the extension of work time. The recent expose of work practices at Amazon speaks to the power of capital in imposing poor working conditions, including excessive work hours, on workers. The effects of rising inequality has also fed a long work hours culture by increasing the economic necessity to work more.

David Graeber makes the provocative claim that technology has advanced at the same time as what he calls “bullshit” or pointless jobs have multiplied. This is why we have not realized Keynes' prediction that we’d all be working 15-hour weeks in the 21st century, as a result of technological progress.

Instead, we are living in a society where work gets created that is of no social value. The reason for this, according to Graeber, is the need of the ruling class to keep workers in work. While technology with the potential to reduce work time exists, the political challenge of a working population with time on its hands makes the ruling class unwilling to realize this potential. Working less, while feasible and desirable, is blocked by political factors.

Working for change: The costs of long work hours, as mentioned above, are poorer health and lower well-being for workers. But for employers too there are costs in terms of lower productivity and lower profitability. Yet these costs seem to go unnoticed despite evidence pointing to their existence. Here again politics may explain why shorter work time has not been embraced by many employers.

Experiments in shorter working exist, to be sure. Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing retailer, is to allow its employees to work a four day week. This has been widely reported in a positive way. Workers will benefit from a better work-life balance, while the firm will reap the benefits of lower labour costs due to lower turnover costs.

Yet, on closer inspection, the new scheme to be introduced by Uniqlo has its downsides. In return for a four-day working week, workers will be expected to work ten-hour shifts during the days they work (a 40-hour working week will be squeezed into four days).

This is not only an extension to the normal length of the working day; it also puts at risk the potential rewards of working four days in the week. Workers may be so exhausted after working a four-day work week they need a full day to recover from their previous exertions. In this case, their quality of work and life may not be enhanced at all; indeed it may be diminished, if they suffer the ill-effects of overwork.

Ironically, schemes such as the one to be introduced by Uniqlo illustrate the obstacles that remain in achieving less work. Only a reduction in the working week to 30 hours or less can be seen as genuine progress in the achievement of shorter work time.

For us to reach–and enjoy–a three or ideally a four-day weekend, we need to reimagine society in ways that subvert the prevailing work ethic. We need to embrace the idea of working less as a means to a life well lived. We need to reject the way of living that sees work as the be all and end all of life.

So enjoy the holiday while you can. See it as a reminder of a life that could be – a life that we should seek to achieve, by resolving to overcome the barriers, economic as well as ideological and political, to working less.

Second Job Window Cleaners

A 2014 survey by the Fire Brigades Union found that a third of full-time firefighters had a second job. 

'I ran myself into the ground': life at the bottom end of the public sector pay scale: Many public services staff in the UK take on a second job just to survive. Here, some of them reveal what it’s like living with anxiety, zero-hours contracts and low pay. A 2014 Unison survey revealed that 80% of school support staff were concerned about workload, and 90% were worried about low pay. And a 2014 YouGov survey by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) of almost 10,000 firemen found that a third of full-time firefighters had a second job.

So what impact does such insecurity and overworking have on people’s lives?

Mental health: An increase in zero-hours contracts has led to anxiety among employees uncertain of their weekly cashflow.

Physical health: Overworking can take its toll on physical wellbeing too – Greenwood took three weeks off work last year as a result of work-related illness, he says, but had to return for financial reasons. “I ran myself into the ground, but I need to work to get the money to do what I want,” he says. “It’s a double-edged blade.”

For those working long hours exercise often falls by the wayside, despite its importance in reducing stress, Donaldson-Feilder says. A lottery win for me would be to not work a second job so I could pick my children up from school and take them swimming.

A full-time firefighter and FBU representative, who runs a window cleaning business to help provide for his family, says he earns £30,000 a year but his large pension contributions mean his wage is comparable to a £22,000 job. “I’ll sometimes do window cleaning from 8am to 4pm, then do a firefighting night shift from 6pm to 9am,” he says. “I’d like a gym membership but there’s no point – I can’t afford it and I wouldn’t have time to go.”

Family life and relationships: The work-life balance can be significantly skewed when tackling two jobs. “There is a massive quality of life issue here,” says Mike Short, senior national officer for local government at Unison. “People take on a second job but should be spending time with family and friends.”

The firefighter says the biggest pressure he feels from holding down two jobs is missing out on time with his partner and four children. “A lottery win would be the opportunity to not work a second job so I could pick my children up from school and take them swimming,” he says. “Firefighting has a reasonably family-friendly work pattern, if only it paid more money.”

Donaldson-Feilder says maintaining support networks is crucial to prevent feelings of isolation. “Look for ways you can build in time for people who care about you and who are supportive of you,” she advises overworked staff. “If you don’t have a big social circle, get involved in activities that are altruistic in some way, such as at a local charity.”

And regardless of stressful working conditions, high pensions and pay cuts, altruism is the main reason many people continue to pursue a career in public services. “If I really pushed myself, I could probably earn enough money window cleaning,” says the firefighter. “But I love my job and many people join this profession and take a pay cut because it can be very rewarding.”

Beckenham Window Cleaner Van Stolen As He Works

The van looked like this, with the registration LC57 WCP. Click to enlarge.

Beckenham window cleaner has van stolen as he works: A window cleaner had his van swiped whilst working on a house in Beckenham yesterday. His blue Nissan Primastar, registration number LC57 WCP, was stolen from Worsley Bridge Road in Beckenham, opposite Kent County Cricket Club, at around 11.30 am.

The van belongs to window cleaning company Nandor's and has 'Nandor's - Window Cleaning' written on the side. Owner of the company Nandor Parazos, 36, told News Shopper that one of his employees was cleaning the windows at the back of a property when his hose stopped running.

When the window cleaner went round to check, the van had been stolen and hose disconnected. He said that his employee noticed a man wandering near the van before he went around the back of the property and believes that he could be the thief. If anyone has any information, call police on 101.

Also see:

Lucky Escape For Window Cleaner As Van Is Stolen

Stolen Van Driven Off With Window Cleaner Inside

Couple injured while trying to stop van thieves

Contains Brodex System.

Window Washer Or Gunman?

Window washers a threat?

Reported gunman at Resolute Health actually window washer: New Braunfels Police Department’s SWAT team on Saturday conducted a thorough search on the new Resolute Health campus in New Braunfels in search of a man reportedly seen there with a gun, according to a written statement the department released. But, investigators determined, the person a passerby told police was a gunman on a roof happened to be a window washer working, an executive with the health system said Monday.

Investigators determined, the person a passerby told police was a gunman on a roof happened to be a window washer working.

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas: A false report of a man with a gun sent law enforcement agencies in New Braunfels, Texas, scrambling to secure a hospital Saturday. Police said they received the tip at approximately 11:15 a.m. Officers were immediately dispatched to Resolute Health Hospital, located in the 500 block of Creekside Dr. An Eyewitness at the scene told KENS 5 that SWAT officers were making rounds through the hospital's floors, going door to door, in order to secure the building. 

No gunman was located, police wrote in a statement. According to the New Braunfels Police Department, the information they received was vague and did not provide any specific details. Patti Tanner, a spokeswoman for Resolute Health said the man believed to be a gunman was actually a window washer. Tanner said the hospital's systems worked as designed and that the experience would serve as a good training exercise. The building was deemed safe within two hours and police cleared the scene.