"Clean it like it's your house."

March 27, 2021 5:49 AM

What the ‘Invisible’ People Cleaning the Subway Want Riders to Know an article from the NY Times

To support workers: Transit Workers Union

posted by RobinofFrocksley (9 comments total)

That headline oof. How about ‘Invisible’ Train Cleaners Tell of Unsafe, Unsanitary Working Conditions?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:31 AM on March 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

she had worked for nearly three months without a place to eat lunch or access to the station bathroom.

Why are companies always so evil as to restrict bathroom access when they can get away with it. There is nothing like it to make me want to support a strike and/or unionization.
posted by Mitheral at 6:39 AM on March 27, 2021 [29 favorites]

Why are companies always so evil as to restrict bathroom access when they can get away with it. There is nothing like it to make me want to support a strike and/or unionization.


Urinetown (2001)
posted by fluttering hellfire at 6:48 AM on March 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

Well, it seems a really good plan in a pandemic to make sure there’s no place for people to wash their hands.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:01 AM on March 27, 2021 [7 favorites]

I guess they figure if nobody’s allowed to use the john, they won’t have to underpay some other “contractor” to clean it as often.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:09 AM on March 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm glad the transit worker's union wants to include the cleaning crews, who were supposed to be temporary employees but have already been working on the trains for a year.

Ms. Muñoz, who cleaned the offices of an architecture firm before the pandemic, said the work was taxing and the rules were strict. Workers were let go for arriving minutes late, or for calling in sick, including from Covid-19, she said.

They were eventually told not to drink beverages on the job so they would not need to use the bathroom, and because the bottles cluttered the work space. “It was an oven in the summer,” she said. “We had to sneak sips of water.”

Every paragraph is horrible.
posted by subdee at 9:14 AM on March 27, 2021 [18 favorites]

An important article. Though, the "he said, she said" style makes me wish there was a newspaper in NYC that could carry out the sort of journalism required to answer straightforward factual questions. (I assume all that hedging wasn't the writer's choice.)
posted by eotvos at 9:37 AM on March 27, 2021 [10 favorites]

This is an important story, certifiable pretty typical of how people are treated. They work overnight in trainyards, genuinely not visible, poorly paid, and doing work on which our health depends. The union should have stuck up for them, members of not.
posted by theora55 at 6:27 AM on March 28, 2021 [5 favorites]

Here's a paywall-free link to the NYT story.
posted by signsofrain at 4:43 PM on March 28, 2021 [3 favorites]