As a precursor please see my post about Schadenfreude and Jerry Brown.

We begin with this article from Sacramento’s revered Leftist news source, SacBee.com:

Blood, syringes, feces: CalTrans workers seek protections for clearing homeless camps

by Marjie Lundstrom

(Subtitled: Because, After All, Somebody’s Gotta Do It)

Under a freeway overpass, beneath a busy bridge, the ragged tents and shopping carts multiply, communities of human beings glimpsed in the rear-view mirrors of passing motorists.

The job often falls to the California Department of Transportation to clean up these homeless encampments, but highway workers have now drawn their own line in the sand.

Last week, the union representing Caltrans maintenance workers filed a grievance against the department, contending that employees responsible for the massive cleanups are not being adequately protected.

In many instances, workers are not given appropriate protective gear, vaccinations, training or enough compensation for the “dangerous hazmat duties they are performing” on Caltrans property, according to the grievance filed by the International Union of Operating Engineers, Unit 12.

Uh-oh. California not perhaps living up to its Idyllic Utopian Goals? No, not IUDs. I wrote: IUGs. Sheesh.

“It’s extremely hazardous, it’s extremely dangerous,” said Steve Crouch, the union’s director of public employees, who filed the grievance.

Crouch, who has spoken with numerous workers in the field, said he hears the same lament: “We didn’t sign on for this.”

Oh but wait. Most certainly you did. Simply by living in the PSWFLRFC, or the People’s Socialist Workers Freedom Liberation Republic Front of California.

It gets better, but only when the truth emerges.

One Caltrans worker, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said he has been involved in at least six cleanups so far this year.

“I’ve been exposed to blood, needles, women’s feminine products. Five-gallon buckets of human feces,” he told The Bee.

Let that roil around in your Brain Theater for a moment or three.

His protective gear? A pair of gloves, he said.

“And that’s really not protective,” he quickly added. “It’s funky, and I’m putting this politely. It’s extremely nasty. You never know what you’re going to step in.”

Or on. And it’s not cheap. But hell, you California taxpayers are footing the bill and you don’t seem to mind.

According to Caltrans’ in-house publication, Mile Marker magazine, the department has spent about $29.2 million cleaning up encampments since fiscal 2012-13. Caltrans estimated the bill in 2016-17 to be more than $10 million – a 34 percent increase over the previous year – and involved all 12 regional districts.

The rising costs coincide with California’s growing homeless population, which increased by nearly 14 percent between 2016 and 2017 to an estimated 134,278, according to the most recent annual report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. More than half of the nation’s homeless individuals were found in four states: California, New York, Florida and Texas, the report said.

California has already been cited for having the worst quality of life of all the states — 50th of the 50. Why not the greatest amount of filth and squalor as well? California at least strives for consistency.

California’s all about the environment. That’s why they love their homeless and their mental defectives. Read on.

For Caltrans, the typical camp cleanup takes days to complete, beginning with a notification posted at the site at least 72 hours before crews arrive, a recent Mile Marker article stated. Caltrans workers are escorted by state or local law enforcement and, in some cases, social workers and homeless advocates.

In carrying out the cleanups, the department cites the camps’ potential to damage highway infrastructure, contribute to community blight and pose health and safety risks. According to Caltrans, materials routinely found include human waste, spoiled food, animal carcasses, broken glass, toxic chemicals, hypodermic needles and weapons.

Don’t you think it’s time for CalTrans workers to just be quiet? Isn’t it their duty to simply do the job and shut up? They should be thankful to be given gloves. It’s California, man, a Leftist Utopia. Don’t they get that?

Union leader Crouch said he was not aware of any specific worker injuries but noted that “the potential is there.” San Diego, for instance, experienced a devastating Hepatitis A outbreak last year that swept through the region’s homeless population.

Oh come on. That’s just overblown. There’s nothing wrong with California that a much larger application of Leftist policies can’t cure.

BZ