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OK, so upon first read I thought this was a great plan. The kind of plan I wish all governments would instate. You have a problem that needs fixing…in Bakersfield’s case it’s litter. Something happened with their prison cleanup crew so Sal Moretti, Bakersfield’s Solid Waste Division superintendent, decided to enlist the local homeless to be paid to do the cleanup. What’s wrong with this you might ask? People need jobs and they are being paid. Well, there was a line in the article I read that stated California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) agreed to come up with some of the money to pay the homeless-center clients, as long as the labor costs wouldn’t be higher than they were for inmates. This is where a problem may lie. Usually prisoners get paid about $0.35-$0.45 an hour. If the government is paying the homeless that amount, way below the Federal minimum wage, then these homeless people are not being helped but are being exploited. Now we already know the prisoners are being exploited but that’s another story. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the next few days.
