Full Citation
Title: JANITORS: The Pandemic’s Unseen Essential Workers
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: Janitors are California’s unseen essential workers. While grocery store workers, health care workers and delivery drivers receive much deserved attention as essential workers crucial for our wellbeing during the pandemic, janitors’ contributions to Californians’ health and safety remains invisible. The cleaning industry, by its very nature, keeps janitors in the shadows. Most janitors work at night cleaning office buildings, grocery stores, and restaurants. In the morning, consumers expect these spaces to be clean, sanitary, and ready for the public’s use without fully appreciating the plight of the janitors who work nightly to maintain these spaces. Other janitors work during the day or in 24-hour facilities where there is contact with other groups of workers and the public. This is especially true in workplaces serving vulnerable populations, such as hospitals and senior facilities. Despite working in plain sight, these workers still are often neglected because they are employed by subcontractors under substandard conditions in comparison to their co-workers in the same workspace. To understand the experience of these unseen workers during the pandemic, the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund conducted a survey of non-union janitors between July and August 2020. The janitors surveyed were from various work locations in California that included office buildings, grocery stores, restaurants, health care facilities and government buildings. In April 2021, MCTF returned to a group of those surveyed to conduct more in-depth interviews to uncover how workers fared through the 2020/2021 winter surge of COVID-19 cases in California. This is the first survey-based study focusing on the experience of this vulnerable group of workers during the pandemic.
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Authors: Hayes, Paul; Palma, Guadalupe; Aaron, Yardenna
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Health, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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