There's Good Money in Sewage

Members of the Sewermen's and Streetrleaners' Union (in this context, particularly the sewer workers) are not paid well, and they resent this fact, since their work is unpleasant and unhealthy. They have two ways of remedying this state of affairs.

1. Zombie Labor: lmre Petrosian, head of the union (see Chapter 4), purchases zombies for work in the sewers from Old Mother Grubb (see above). Some 25% of the "people" working in the sewers are, in fact, zombies. Zombies are ideal labor-untiring, not prone to disease, and totally uncomplaining. Squads of sewermen cut their working hours significantly by working with zombies, and most of them know about these creatures. They protect this secret with the utmost care, and pretend that their co-workers are mute, fatigued by disease and hard work (zombies move slowly), and so on, if any one gets suspicious.

2. Flotsam and Jetsam: Sewermen recover an amazing diversity of items that fall down drains and get lost; rings, small jewelry items, ivory combs, coinage, and the like. Each team of sewermen collects such discovered items at the end of each working shift, and takes them to the union office, where lmre Petrosian issues a receipt and then sells these items to various merchants through an intermediary, his brother Nastain (a pawnbroker by trade). Nastain sells the merchandise to his friends, takes a cut, and issues a receipt with cash to lmre, who takes a cut for himself plus a slice for the union, and then passes the rest to the team of work ers that discovered the prize. This is done for all items except coinage, which is kept by the team, and for valuable gems or jewelry, which are fenced by Destain Hallwell, lmre's thief contact.