janitors

Compare American Building Management, which is in the same business.[1] They provide janitors, security guards, and similar services.

The solidarity with the janitors arises because UC staff are suffering about as badly as the students.

People who screen calls and control access to other people are receptionists or secretaries, not janitors.

Go to many union firms and the janitors and the engineers make within a few dollars per hour of each other.

You'll likely get told off by subsystem maintainers or even kernel janitors before that.

Why not also blame the janitors that clean the office they work in?

You're not going to build a business selling to janitors making minimum wage.

Or why is Chicago on the hook for billions in pensions for meter maids, janitors, bus drivers and other low effort/easily roboticized jobs?

That said, I certainly don't think Apple developers are badly off compared to Apple janitors, or Bay Area fastfood workers.

Where will the taxi drivers and janitors go when robots replace them?

There's also a gender gap to address with janitors and bus drivers.

You can recruit janitors off of the street, and their pay (while I argue, should be livable) should reflect that.

There is "custodian"; sometimes building janitors are called custodians, but that word has connotations of taking care of something (having it in your custody).

The NYC middlemen do a lot: They bribe doormen and janitors, they screen for "undesirables" that owners don't want in the building, they make you wait long times....

I've heard this as an explanation for the US's perceived lack of "manufacturing" jobs -- if a factory employs its own maintenance people / janitors / whatever, those are manufacturing jobs, but if the factory contracts with another company to send people to do the same work, those are service jobs.

Janitors have bills to pay, mouths to feed etc.