"Why the heck are we giving them $1.2 million at all? We should find another vendor." Spoken like a truly privileged person who doesn't even understand how the janitorial companies work. First, notice that the person who spoke about this issue at the City Council meeting needed an interpreter. Janitors are the lowest-paid workers who take the highest risks in their job. Yet the company who pays them says they can steal their raises because they already pay over minimum wage. This is a company that is using a language barrier to steal from hard working people. This is the worst kind of crime and the fact that Palo Alto has not rectified this situation infers complacency and/or complicity in this fraudulent wage theft scheme. At the REAL end of the day, habla habla habla y nunca dice nada.

So what happened to the other half owed to these workers? Will they never get paid?

Obviously the City should stop dealing with SWA. Our State Senator, Assembly member and Congress member emphasize this need for change.

Council must do Monday as Vice Mayor Stone says. Not to would be embarrassing and uncaring toward the City’s hardworking janitors.

Quote: "Given the history of wage theft in Palo Alto and elsewhere, Peabody said cities need to make sure that contractors are committed to following the law and ensuring safe working conditions so that incidents like the recent wage discrepancy don't happen again." Per usual GS, your thesis is buried at the bottom of the article. I'll never forget Mon. March 3 2020 PACC mtng. Shikada whinning City Hall did not have enough PPE to distribute to his own staff let alone "essential low-wage workers who empties their trash. Because? Well the City ordered from the same vendors as our residents. From like Amazon, Wal-Mart & Costco...

So there is no emergency City disaster reserve stock for calamities that we've been thru: Fires, COVID, Floods? The wage gap was 50 years in the making and now its rearing its head and fast.
And through all: Yet these low-income workers were required to commute in, continue to mop up, clean toilets, throw away staff's empty beverage containers and wipe away the grime and shine the brass while the growing stain has only gotten wider, deeper and louder.

For our state, county and city Cal Pers beneficiaries who get 14 days paid COVID pay every time they sniffle, when the rest of us get fired for staying home with sick infected kids with COVID. The City did not provide a single sanctioned center staffed by their own OES teams in which to pick up a mask, a TP, wet wipes, a glove and later, even a single rapid test, or a bag of potatos. Yes. Yes. Yes. There was Stanford, and PAUSD, CVS, Walgreens the overwhelmed Palo Alto Pantry (a true local hero) ... The only job Shikada is donating is by sand bagging CC, residents & City wide emergencies with soup recipes many can not even get ingredients for let alone have a hot plate in which to simmer & warm rhands .

Our lowest earners clean up the mess at City Hall know the most, yet get treated the worst.

How's Shikada's recent raise working for him? Nothing like the chickens coming home to roost.