Consuelo Moreno, UNISON rep at SOAS. Image: Marcus Rose
“Hell” is the word Roisin Keenan uses to describe the pandemic.
As a hospital domestic in Northern Ireland, Roisin and her colleagues were forced to take huge risks during COVID – with no reward.
“It was terrifying. Patients were coming out of high-dependency units after having COVID, and we were being thrown straight in to clean them.”
“Every day, I’d come home from work and take my work clothes off in the bathroom and wash them. I was so scared of bringing the virus home to my children – we all were.”
While all health workers were at risk during the pandemic, Roisin (pictured below) says she felt the health service hierarchy in force like never before. “There’s a class system in hospitals and the cleaners are right at the bottom,” she says.
Roisin Keenan, UNISON rep at St Luke’s Hospital, Armagh. Image: Kevin Cooper
“I remember once kitting myself up to clean the high-dependency unit and one of the nurses challenged me about using one of the heavy masks. She said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you allowed to use them?”
I said to her, “If you want to go in and clean a unit where people have COVID, I can give it to you.”
Yet the risks involved in cleaning hospitals haven’t disappeared since lockdown ended: “We’re working exposed to C.diff and norovirus and COVID-19 and we’re on £11.45 an hour,” says Roisin.
In the seven years she’s worked as a hospital domestic, Roisin has seen how staffing shortages and cost-cutting measures in the health service have made life harder for cleaners.
“I do this job because I like helping people. But what we do is underpaid and our workloads are getting heavier because people leave the job and there doesn’t seem much hurry to employ more.”
“We used to get provided with bottled water in the summer because it’s such a physical job,” Roisin says. “But they cut that and we were told to drink the water out of the taps. Not even two months after that, there was Legionnaires’ disease found in one of the pipes in the building. And even after that, they didn’t reinstate the bottled water.”
“I feel looked down on, I really do,” she says. “People generally don’t respect cleaners because it’s work that’s mostly done by women. We’re expected to do so much, and then we go home and we look after our children and our elderly parents, on top of a million tasks. We’re all burned out.”
According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the cleaning industry employs an estimated half a million people across the UK, is 79% female, and has a higher-than-average number of ethnic minority, migrant and older workers.
So what keeps Roisin going in such a tough job? “My colleagues,” she says. “We have good camaraderie. Our supervisor is good too. We have a calendar in our break room and everyone’s birthday is on it. We do a collection every month so that everybody gets a bunch of flowers and something nice on their birthday. We make each other feel valued, even if nobody else does.”
“People only realise how valuable the work is when it’s not done”
Kelly* is a full-time cleaner at a college in the South of England and, like Roisin, she believes that cleaning work is undervalued because it’s done by women.
“I think the mentality people have about cleaning in the home is the same when it’s done professionally. In the home, the cleaning just gets done, doesn’t it? Nobody takes any notice when a woman’s doing that. The same goes for cleaning in the workplace.”
For Kelly, the work that ‘gets done’ is a daily eight-and-a-half-hour shift where she ensures all communal areas, toilets and refectory stay clean and hygienic for students and staff.
“It’s a manual, labour-intensive job,” she says. “It’s very physical and involves planning. People think cleaners just come in and push the hoover round, but there’s far more to it. It’s not brain surgery, but we’re trained and we hold high standards. And where would we all be if cleaners didn’t do the work we do?”
“People only realise how valuable the work is when it’s not done. It’s like when bin men go on strike. People take the work we do for granted.”
During the pandemic Kelly was the only cleaner in the college, which she says was “surreal and a bit scary”. “Initially, people were very appreciative. Generally, the staff here are very grateful for what we do. But it’s like any situation. Once it’s over, people move on, and the memory fades.”
“It’s nice to feel trusted by others to provide a clean, hygienic and healthy environment for them to work in. But generally cleaning is downgraded.”
When Kelly first started her job 18 years ago, she was employed directly by the college. A couple of years in, a private contractor took over the company and the contract has changed hands four times since. “I’m now on manager number 13. Every company that comes in has their own spin on things and you have to adapt.
Outsourcing and contracting generally have a negative impact on working conditions. But as Kelly was first employed by the college, her terms and conditions have been preserved.
“A lot of these cleaning companies run things in a basic way with no sick pay. Luckily, I do have sick pay, but I have to keep reiterating that to every company that takes over the contract. It’s always difficult when you get a new company, you’re never quite sure how it’s going to pan out. I’ve been lucky so far but I know for other people, it’s not like that.”
“Our stress levels are sky high, and people are falling ill because they are overworking”
Consuelo Moreno (pictured above) knows all about the perils of private contractors – and what it’s like to work with no sick pay.
She’s been a cleaner at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for 22 years. As a UNISON rep, Consuelo played a key role in a huge 12-year insourcing campaign at the university that saw 57 cleaners previously employed by a private company brought in-house.
“One of the key motivators for cleaners joining the union was that they were being asked to come into work while they were sick, otherwise they would not be paid,” she says.
In 2006, Consuelo co-founded the Justice for Cleaners campaign with her colleagues. They demanded union recognition, the London Living Wage and equal sick pay, pension and holiday pay to those working directly for the university.
In 2008, Justice for Cleaners achieved their first two demands. In 2014, they achieved the rest. In 2016, the in-sourcing campaign expanded to become Justice for Workers (pictured below), which incorporated not just cleaners but other outsourced staff in security, maintenance and catering.
Consuelo stands in the middle of a Justice for Workers meeting
Finally in 2018, after over a decade of meetings, strikes and reprisals from the employer, which included the deportation of nine cleaners, Consuelo and her colleagues won. SOAS is now one of the few universities that directly employs its cleaning staff.
“It was a big victory,” Consuelo smiles. “And I feel so much pride about it because over 90% of those who fought for this are from immigrant backgrounds.”
Across the UK, migrant workers are heavily represented in cleaning industries, making up an estimated third of the total cleaning workforce.
However, the campaign’s success was bittersweet. When the pandemic hit two years later, the university management made big cuts to the cleaning workforce. Now, Consuelo is one of only 20 cleaners on the whole campus. Her workload has exploded.
“When we had a bigger team, I would have from 10am to 1pm to clean the whole of the third floor in one building. Now, I have to clean that third floor alongside the floors in other buildings. The physical and mental stress is huge.”
“Though the cleaning staff have been formalised in-house, there is still lots of pressure on us,” she says. “Our stress levels are sky high, and people are falling ill because they are overworking.”
Though Consuelo feels like her work is valued by students and other workers, she doesn’t feel this is the case with the university administration.
“They don’t value the human cost or toll it takes to keep the campus clean. SOAS is a university that espouses values about human rights and equality. But the cleaning staff are not being treated with those values. Is it because we’re the most vulnerable workers?
“I feel drained that we still have to keep fighting,” she says. “But I’m thankful to everyone who has been sympathetic to the struggles of the cleaning community at SOAS. UNISON has backed our struggle for a long time, and I’m grateful for that solidarity.”
“Nobody cares about cleaners because we’re invisible”
Short staffing is a problem for Amy*, one of 10 domestics working in a busy city hospital in the North of England that sees thousands of people pass through every day.
“A lot of people have left the NHS because of what we went through in COVID,” she says.
“I would find myself crying while walking home from work. People were in hospital very frightened because they were going to die. I had patients whose family weren’t allowed to visit asking me to hold their hand. I shouldn’t have, but I did. We’re all human in the end.
“I wanted to help out, but I was working all day and couldn’t have any connection with my children because I had to self-isolate downstairs in my house.”
Now, she says, “it’s like nobody remembers what we went through.”
As people have left over the years and haven’t been replaced, Amy’s found herself doing the work of two full-time jobs plus another part-time job. Her shifts are seven and a half hours with a half an hour break, and it’s tough, manual labour.
“I’m on my feet so long they’re swollen and uncomfortable and my back hurts and my hands hurt. I get two days off, and I’ve just about recovered by Sunday. But then I’m back at it on Monday.”
“The job simply doesn’t pay enough, so where people have left since the pandemic, they can’t recruit people. If they upped the pay, they’d have a lot more people wanting to work here. Sixteen years ago, it wasn’t a bad job. Now, I’m skipping meals to make sure that my son has enough.
“I could go and work in a shop, with less stress, for more money. The only thing stopping me from doing that is my pension.”
Turning 55 this year, Amy doesn’t think she can stick it out to retirement. “I would like to say I’ll stay until I’m 67, but if it continues the way it is, getting £12 an hour to kill myself doing the work of three people, I won’t be staying, it’s not worth the hurt.”
In her 16 years as a domestic, she says she’s never seen morale as low.
“Nobody cares about cleaners because we’re invisible.”
*Not her real name.
