Janitors bear burden in pandemic
The old job of custodians was tidying up. The new one is protecting against a killer through disinfection.
As the coronavirus continues to rage and businesses and workplaces weigh the risks of reopening, janitors have a warning about the current state of cleaning in the United States. Many say they have not been given enough resources to fight the pathogen, or, in a few cases, even hot water to wash their hands. They are often not told if someone has tested positive where they are working, many said in interviews, making it difficult to protect themselves and others.
Cleaners have recently fallen ill across the country, from the University of Texas at Austin, to a Fox Entertainment lot in Los Angeles, to casinos in Mississippi. Workers in office buildings and supermarkets say they lack the time and training to do the job right. And although airlines have tried to win back customers by raising sanitation standards, pilots, flight attendants and cabin cleaners report that the efforts are still inadequate, with reused rags, unwiped tray tables, and bathrooms that aren’t disinfected between flights.
Interviews with dozens of workers, employers, cleaning company executives and union officials, as well as a review of records from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, reveal other glaring problems. At a Miami office tower, Martha Lorena Cortez Estrada resorted to bringing in her own Clorox and making her own masks. “Our brooms were worn out; we were mopping with just water and no disinfectant,” said Cortez, 58, who makes $8.56 an hour.
As the country navigates whether and how to report to work, shop, eat out, travel and educate children, it is often impossible to tell how frequently or thoroughly anything is cleaned. Recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are general. OSHA is investigating only a small fraction of virus-related complaints, according to a spokeswoman.
“Reopenings happened across the country without much thoughtfulness for cleaning standards,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 375,000 of the nation’s custodians. She is advocating better standards at the state and city level and a certification system, like the letter grades displayed at restaurants. While a few states have issued requirements, Virginia passed tougher cleaning rules Wednesday and said it would enforce them.
Meanwhile, the task of protecting the American workplace has fallen to people on one of its bottom rungs. Many of the country’s more than 2 million custodians do their work at night, unseen, for minimum wage. They are often treated as a labor cost to be contracted out for the lowest possible price. Cleaning company executives and union officials say that standards have fallen in recent years as businesses have cut back on janitorial services.
“For years the industry has been really working towards a minimum scope of work,” said Laurie Sewell, chief executive of Servicon, a commercial cleaning company with 1,600 workers.
Several contract cleaners described a COVID-19 nightmare: being expected to clean a space where someone infected may have been, and not being made aware of it.
After years of economic struggle, Steve Kelley, 54, a cleaner in Pittsburgh, cherishes his $18.07 office custodian job, especially now that working from home is becoming standard for so many organizations. “We work with the fear that we won’t be working,” he said.
But he recently learned through other building staff that several people where he worked had tested positive. He and co-workers demanded better notification. “They have to start telling us what, where, who,” he said.
Even when custodians have a clearer sense of the potential dangers, they can feel obligated to step into higher-risk situations. In April, Hilda Aguilar’s cleaning company assigned her to a drive-thru testing site and clinic in San Clemente, Calif., that was about to open to coronavirus patients. To her surprise, they asked her to continue cleaning the empty clinic in the evenings even after it was operational, with only gloves and a mask and no training, she said. Aguilar — who is 39, makes $13.50 an hour and was a nurse in her native Mexico — refused until given a protective suit.
A representative from Performance Building Services, her employer, said that Aguilar was not in danger because she was working after hours in offices used by medical staff.