CLEANERS’ MESSY DEAL
Army of nonunion, uninsured, poorly paid workers scrub our subway
Low-wage, uninsured workers hired by private contrac- tors are at the vanguard of the MTA’s nightly subway scrubdown.
Since May 6, when the system began to close from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each night, outside cleaners have set up around-the-clock shops in at least 14 end-of-line stations, , quickly mopping and wiping down the interiors of trains s before they’re sent back out for service.
Many of the workers are e in their early 20s, and many are immigrants who do not speak English and are not el- igible for federal assistance.
Private subway cleaners s across the city last week said they were not offered health insurance, despite the dicey job of cleaning trains during a pandemic that’s already killed more than 20,000 New Yorkers and at least 118 Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees.
At the Eighth Ave. termi- - nall on the L line, workers hired by the company FleetWash to clean subway cars make $20 an hour, and can n score some overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week.
“Everybody’s already out of work,” said Jahmil Jarvis, , 29, a cleaner at the station n who started working for the company three months ago and recently shifted to cleaning the subway. “This is a paycheck every week.”
Jarvis’ reward for eradi- cating coronavirus from the e subway is $5 an hour more e than minimum wage — and some cleaners hired by other companies make even less.
A group of five workers s hired to clean trains at the Forest Hills-71st Ave. station in Queens on Tuesday night told the Daily News they had no idea how much they were e being paid. They didn’t even know the name of the com- pany they were working for — Home Clean Home Inc.
“I won’t know until we get t our checks,” said one cleaner at the station. “I think it’s s some corporation that owns s a corporation.”
Some cleaners at the sta- tion expected to get about $15 an hour for their labor, while others heard rumors they would make $18 an hour.
The workers’ supervisor also had no idea what his subordinates were making.
On the first night of the e shutdown, a group of six workers hired to clean sub- way cars walked off the job b at the Flatbush Ave. station at the end of the Nos. 2 and 5 lines in Brooklyn. They said d they weren’t given enough protective equipment and were worried about cleaning around homeless people e sleeping on the trains.
Lily Sierra, CEO ofLN Pro Services, which was contracted to clean the Flatbush Ave. station, said the clean- ers were making $18 an hour r for shifts during the day and d $19 an hour if they work overnight.
Hugo Benvenuto, chief operating officer at Modern
Facility Services, said the people he hired to clea a Queens’ Lefferts Blvd. sta tion on the A line were pai i “more than minimum wage about $20 an hour.”
Cleaners employed American Maintenance In n who worked on trains at the World Trade Center station at the end of the E line o Tuesday night said the e made $20 an hour on week days and $25 an hour o weekends. One cleaner sai i he chose to work seven day a week in order to pay hhi bills.
The MTA rushed to hir private contractors to mak good on Gov. Cuomo’s pla a to shut down subways in th wee hours so trains and stations could be thoroughl l cleaned. Cuomo announce e the plan April 30, and th MTA implemented it Ma a 6.
The job requires more workers than the MTA ha in-house, especially as the agency’s workforce has been strained the past two months as thousands of em ployees have been out sick with COVID-19 or directed to quarantine at home. The agency also cut 66 cleaner positions last year.
Transit bosses sent out purchase orders to at least five companies to scrub trains in at least 14 end-of-line subway stations. The agreements did not specify how much the people hired by those companies should be paid — only that the contractors follow all “applicable wage and employment laws,” said MTA spokesman Ken Lovett.
“The MTA has undertaken the Herculean effort of cleaning the subway cars at least daily in order to keep our customers and workers safe at this unprecedented moment in history,” said Lovett. “We cannot do this without additional help.”
The hastily hired workers make significantly less than the MTA’s unionized cleaners, who get $30 an hour plus health insurance, workers’ compensation, priority for COVID-19 testing — and a guaranteed $500,000 for their
families if they die from the disease.
But even though they make much less, the private workers tend to do a more thorough job of scrubbing the trains — in part because they have no union to cause a fuss if they’re not protected.
Unionized cleaners are not allowed to wipe down trains at terminals when homeless people are aboard — but private cleaners at several stations one night last week were directed by their bosses to clean around people sleeping on trains.
MTA officials said the outside cleaners were not supposed to clean trains unless they were empty, noting that they would remind contractors about the policy.
Still, the MTA has few mechanisms to ensure the contractors follow the rules.
In some cases, a crew of about 12 has just five minutes to scrub the entirety of a 10-car train before it returns to service. That gives managers little time to ensure the cleaners avoid cars where homeless people are sleeping.
The private companies also have cleaning supplies the MTA can’t seem to get its hands on. When the subway shuts down overnight, the private companies “fog” the trains, according to Benvenuto, the boss at Modern Facility Services.
The fog he referred to is a relatively new form of electrostatic spray that Cuomo and transit officials said could protect surfaces from the virus for up to three months.
MTA officials in March came to an agreement with Tony Utano, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, that said the “fogging” work would be left to the unionized in-house crews after 90 days.
Utano said the private workers deserve to be paid as much as his members, especially given the dire health risks associated with cleaning a subway during a respiratory pandemic.
“It’s horrible what they’re being paid, but that’s the benefit of belonging to a union,” said Utano. “When this is over they’re going to need to hire more cleaners at the terminals. They cut about 90 cleaners jobs last year, and now they’re going to have to hire them back.”
Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg said the cleaners should be eligible for bonuses for risking their health along with the MTA’s in-house workers, but put the onus on the federal government to come up with the money.
It’s not clear how those payments would be doled out, or if outside cleaners who may be undocumented immigrants could even qualify.
In the meantime, many of the cleaners have no other way to put food on the table.
“I just want to help out and get paid,” said a cleaner at the Forest Hills-71st. Ave station last week. “I don’t know if I’m making what I should, but I need to get paid.”