Hospital custodians swept under the rug

Unsung, they risk health to keep facilities safer Lindsay Schnell

Luis Padilla, 46, stood in line at Mcdonald’s, excited to order his free meal. Earlier that week, the chain announced it would give thank you meals to front-line workers battling the coronavirus.

Padilla, who has spent the last three years as an environmental service tech at Los Angeles County-usc Medical Center – the technical term for a hospital custodian – was thrilled his work was being acknowledged. Then he got to the register.

The cashier glanced at Padilla’s work badge and waved him away. “This is not for you,” Padilla recalls the cashier saying. “This is for doctors, nurses, and police. Don’t be trying to get free food.”

Padilla was crushed.

“No one is thinking about custodians at all,” he said as he recounted the incident. “People have no idea what we do. We’re not just picking up trash.”

Across the country, as millions open their doors and windows every night to cheer doctors and nurses battling a deadly pandemic, people like Padilla operate in the shadows. They work the same 12-hour shifts, using special training to ensure hospitals stay clean, but for considerably less pay and sometimes without the same protective gear given to doctors and nurses.

Environmental service workers “are such an integral part of the whole health care team,” said Jane Hopkins, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union’s Northwest chapter. “In a hospital, they’re just as important as a doctor – they’re just doing a completely different job.”

The union represents about 32,000 nurses, health care workers and behavioral health workers in Washington state. About 1,500 are environmental service workers. Many are Black or Latino, which likely contributes to these workers being overlooked, Hopkins said.

“We talk about heroes, but we don’t talk about them,” Hopkins said. “Decades of institutionalized racism and socially acceptable racism has made it seem like their jobs are not important.”

PPE not always provided

The coronavirus has killed more than 421,000 people worldwide and more than 113,000 in the U.S. alone, but hospital custodians said they are not always given proper personal protective equipment.

Justo Mejia, 58, has spent 10 years as an environmental service worker at Northridge Hospital Medical Center near Los Angeles. On vacation when coronavirus first hit, Mejia returned to work in mid-march and found himself in the middle of unprecedented chaos.

Before the pandemic, he said, the routine was standard: a morning meeting to talk about the day’s plans before he left to clean whatever section of the hospital he’d been as

See CUSTODIANS, Page 2B

LOS ANGELES COUNTY-USC MEDICAL CENTER “We’re heroes, too. We’d like to have some recognition also,” said Luis Padilla, an environmental service worker – commonly known as a custodian – from Los Angeles County-usc hospital.

EVERGREENHEALTH Sherrie Kendall, a worker at Evergreenhealth in Kirkland, Wash., said working in a hospital gives her a sense of purpose during the pandemic.