ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Around 450 immigrant workers who were hired to disinfect New York City's subway trains at the height of the Covid pandemic have just been awarded more than $3 million in back pay.

The workers are claimed to have been underpaid by around $14 dollars per hour and were not provided with respirators or uniforms.

During the pandemic the New York City Transit Authority entered into contracts with private cleaning companies to carry out the deep cleaning and disinfection of underground train carriages within the city's subway stations.

The city comptroller's office sets and enforces prevailing wage laws, and these stipulate that all building service staff employed on public contracts should be paid the prevailing wage - which is a rate of pay higher than the minimum wage and that applies to certain public contracts.

However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority argued that the work was not subject to prevailing wage requirements and that cleaning the carriages in stations did not qualify as building service work.

Claudia Henriquez, Director of Workers' Rights in the comptroller's office, says the underpayment for the workers was in the range of $14 per hour. "This case has been a long time in the making," she said.

The $3 million settlement was secured by New York's city comptroller Brad Lander.

"Without these cleaners sanitising and keeping our train system from piling up with debris, New York City would have had a much harder time getting moving again five years ago," he said in a statement. "They should have been paid NYC's prevailing wage."