MTA is hiring 800 full-time, union subway train and station cleaners
Full-time subway cleaners are replacing the contractors the MTA hired in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — part of a long-term effort to shine up trains and stations for riders and the agency’s employees.
NYC Transit President Richard Davey said Tuesday that 150 cleaners had been hired in recent months, and that in total the agency planned to hire 800 people to clean stations and trains. “We’ve been doing it since the fall,” he said of the hiring efforts. “Right now we’re hiring about 40 a month.”
“We had 75,000 applicants, if you can imagine that,” he added.
In the early days of the pandemic, the MTA spent $193 million hiring private contractors to scrub trains and stations, at a time when riders and workers were especially fearful subway grime might spread disease.
The contract workers, who cleaned the subways at night so other essential workers could get to their jobs during lockdown, were often low paid and lacked insurance benefits — a situation that brought complaints from the subway’s unionized work force. The new cleaners will be full-time, unionized employees, Davey confirmed.
Davey discussed the new hires after a meeting at MTA headquarters of the subway system’s 19 group station managers, responsible for upkeeping groups of stations across Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens.
At the meeting, station managers shared their strategies for improving cleanliness and security.
“One of the questions that I ask [station workers is], ‘Would the condition that you see here today be acceptable at a store that you frequent?’ ” said Santerea Flowers, who manages several stations in the Bronx.
“I think for riders, people are paying attention that we’re not accepting dilapidated stations as the status quo,” Davey said.
Meanwhile, Davies said, his message for his station managers was simple: “You need 80 scrubbing machines? Done. You need more station cleaners? Done. You need the power to move station cleaning schedules around? Done.”