Pittsburgh mayor goes undercover collecting garbage; handling chainsaw on reality show.

[Divernan]

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto donned a wig with shoulder-length gray hair and a scraggly, long gray beard to star on an upcoming hourlong episode of the CBS Emmy-winning show “Undercover Boss.” The episode is scheduled to air 8 p.m. Dec. 21.

Peduto spent four days collecting garbage, working as a carpenter hanging doors with the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, cutting logs with a chain saw with Department of Public Works employees and posing as a “self-sufficiency coordinator helping community members who are breaking out of the chain of poverty.”

The days were long, Peduto said. He was up at 5 a.m. putting on makeup from a location in Green Tree, where he stayed during the October filming. It took two hours to apply makeup. “Each one of those hairs were put on separately,” he said. He worked from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. and conducted mayoral business until 9 or 10 p.m.

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I have a law degree, but as a teenager worked one summer as a migrant farm worker & post retirement/post 2008 loss of retirement savings worked as a door to door census worker and one holiday season as a postal worker in a mail processing center (handling heavy packages and machinery). I am absolutely convinced that every person from first level management up to board member, and every elected politician, should work for at least 3 months at a physical labor job to understand physical stress and exhaustion as it relates to the length of shifts plus commuting time, workers' needs for paid sick days & vacation days, and the impact of age and health upon one's work capacities, i.e., appropriate retirement age. At least I was not subject to forced overtime, double shifts and unpaid overtime as are many workers.

I don't agree with Mayor Peduto on every single policy, but kudos to him for his decision to experience labor outside the office environment. How many of the commenters to this article, ridiculing Peduto, have ever worked at jobs like collecting garbage or handling chainsaws? And I don't mean hauling your trash to the curb one day a week or cutting up some downed tree on your property, but working 8 hour shifts with a dangerous piece of machinery. Every mayor in the country ought to do what Peduto did. I'm really looking forward to watching this program.

[oberliner]

1. He should focus on doing his job not being on reality TV shows

I agree that it would be good for him to experience labor outside an office environment but not in the context of a reality television program.