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"The Boss" clutched cardboard cash, as a cigar stub drooped from his mouth and his pupils gleamed with dollar signs. Nicole Nordeste hauled the giant paper-maché puppet on her back from Northeastern University's Kretzman Quad, up Huntington Ave., through Copley Square to Boston Common, leading a procession of about 150 janitors, students, union officials and organizers marching for better wages for Northeastern janitors.

Nordeste, an alumna who's been working with the Justice for Janitors campaign for five years, didn't mind the load. "It's nothing compared to the burden the janitors carry every day," she quipped.

In 2007, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) led the Justice for Janitors campaign, negotiating a master contract for members of SEIU 615 statewide that set standards for wages, benefits and grievance procedures. Sergio Duenas, the organizer for Northeastern University janitors in 615 says they are covered by the master contract, but are fighting for an addendum. "Very few schools don't have an addendum or a side agreement," said Duenas, citing additional benefits offered at Harvard and Brandeis.

Northeastern released a statement reaffirming the appropriateness of the contract, which was "negotiated by the Local 615 SEIU and the Maintenance Contractors of New England. This contract was recommended by the union leadership and unanimously ratified by the union membership in September 2007."

Charlie Noss, a first year law student at Northeastern says the school employs 200 janitors—mostly through Consolidated Services Corp.— 45 percent of whom are employed part-time. "The cutoff for part-time work is 29 hours. That's too many for a part-time job, but not enough to make them eligible for health insurance," she says. "Northeastern has taken a common tactic by outsourcing their labor. Subcontracting allows for decreased wages and benefits and no communication between workers and the administration. Northeastern is not unique there, but it's an unfortunate practice."

Jorge Carrillo works the night shift at Northeastern, from 10pm-6am. "It violates the laws of nature; working happens during the day, sleeping at night," Carrillo said through a translator, before listing the health and family problems such hours incur. "Thanks to low salaries and increased cost of living, we are not able to live a minimum standard of life ... The American Dream we had of coming to this country to get a living wage, buy a home and care for our families has become an American nightmare."

The group marched to the Northeastern president's house on Beacon Street, a recently purchased chunk of prime real estate. "If the university's willing to pay $7.5 million for Joseph Aoun's house, why is a living wage for janitors impractical?" Ness asks.

The lights in the president's house were off and there were no confirmed sightings of Aoun. The group camped out on the Common all weekend (in spite of the cold, wet weather) and collected nearly 1,000 signatures from passersby. The weekend culminated with a rally on Monday night.

Carrillo appreciated the students assisting his cause. "These upcoming professionals are the hope of the class that is dying of hunger," he said.

Dear Reader,

After a week of spring fever (Is senioritis contagious? Thanks, interns.), I spent some pre-season time in Ogunquit, Maine this weekend. In search of brunch, my boyfriend and I stumbled upon the Omelette Factory, a local institution celebrating their 25th year in business. Situated in the basement of Cindy's Convenience Store, one can assume both are owned by the chef extrordinaire, Cindy herself, much like Publick House Provisions featured in the Department of Commerce, which recently opened down the street from its parent restaurant.

At the counter we watched mesmerized as Cindy whipped eggs in an efficient frenzy, mixed toppings on her flat top and maintained a steady banter with the regulars next to us. One topic they touched upon was how the shortage of available summer help is already apparent. Our feature this week delves into the H-2B visa limitations that will affect tourist locales like Ogunquit, particularly the small businesses. One thing we all can do to support the vacation-lands of the Northeast is get out of town. And given last week's weather and the current state of the dollar (you're not going abroad anytime soon), that shouldn't be too tall of an order.

STUFF@NIGHT'S ANNUAL PLAYERS ISSUE—we've just got one question: Why no love for the guy from the Canadian tourist board who bought those two half-page ads? We see that player brunching at Banq all the time!

YVONNE ABRAHAM is back! So is that puss-filled boil on Media Farm's ass. We can't decide which we're more excited about.

THE HERALD'S EXHAUSTIVE COVERAGE of how the Common is full of crack-smokers got even more exhaustive Monday, when their new Michele McPhee and a staff photographer tagged along with a team of undercover narcs. The squad busted Omar from The Wire, along with some other dealers, for slinging rocks "in broad daylight as the tourist season swings into full bloom."

The writing in this installment—number 512 in a gazillion-part series—wasn't any more unspectacular than usual ("As with any good production, a seamless backstage operation drove the show"), but the photos accompanying the two-page spread were the tits. A dealer sitting in the back of a paddy wagon, gnashing his teeth and trying to kick the Herald photog's camera? Highly sensationalistic. More of this, please.

So here's our new plan for saving the Herald: The paper should give up writing about City Hall and Whitey and Joe Fitzgerald's endless parade of heroes altogether, and just publish pictorial essays of guys shooting up and getting cuffed and stuffed. The tabloid would jump right from dudes riding the horse in public to the Inside Track to sports, and we'd buy three copies a day.

ALEX BEAM spent half of Saturday's column rewriting an 18-year old column about small airplane pilots that might have been funny 18 years ago. It was so funny 18 years ago that the wicked old passages in question nabbed the pull quote atop that day's Living & Arts page (explain again how this differs from Living/Arts?).

At first, Media Farm was going to undertake an exhaustive analysis of just how sharply Beam's writing has fallen off in the years between the first and second time he wrote this same column. But then we figured, since he couldn't be bothered to actually work for his paycheck, why should we? So you choose, Alex: Should we rewrite the old punch lines from when we called you a lonely old man who'd lost his fastball, or from the time when we called you a racist and you didn't get the joke and sent like a hundred belligerent emails to Dig HQ?

Related: Why won't you just take the buyout and leave this town the fuck alone???

HOW COULD our award for Lede of the Week not go to the Globe's Sarah Rodman? It can't. So it does. Take it away, friend: "Colbie Caillat (rhymes with 'valet') is from California. But sometimes when she encounters fans of the laid-back, R&B-tinged pop of her 2007 debut album Coco they believe her hometown is MySpace." Wow. That doesn't make any sense at all.

PAUL STEWART, the most famous former pro hockey referee to ever skate without a helmet and be from Boston, popped up in this week's New Yorker. And boy did he do this town proud.

Stewy, who was at an Applebee's in Walpole, Massachusetts, watching the Yankees play the Sox, left a message: "Sean Avery is like a case of jock rash. It's there, it bothers you, and eventually you have to just play through it."

We're guessing the magazine's famed fact-checking operation had a great time verifying the particulars on that one.

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