Cuomo and MTA tap low-wage, uninsured workers to scrub subway for coronavirus

Cleaner mops a 1 train at the South Ferry subway station in Manhattan on Tuesday, May 12.

Low-wage, uninsured workers hired by private contractors are at the vanguard of the MTA’s nightly subway scrubdown.

Since May 6, when the system began to close from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each night, outside cleaners have set up around-the-clock shops in at least 14 end-of-line stations, quickly mopping and wiping down the interiors of trains before they’re sent back out for service.

Many of the workers are in their early 20s, and many are immigrants who do not speak English and are not eligible for federal assistance.

Private subway cleaners across the city last week said they were not offered health insurance, despite the dicey job of cleaning trains during a pandemic that’s already killed more than 20,000 New Yorkers and at least 118 Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees.

At the Eighth Ave. terminal on the L line, workers hired by the company FleetWash to clean subway cars make $20 an hour, and can score some overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week.

“Everybody’s already out of work," said Jahmil Jarvis, 29, a cleaner at the station who started working for the company three months ago and recently shifted to cleaning the subway. “This is a paycheck every week.”

An employee of FleetWash, a private commercial cleaning company, mops an L train subway car in the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue subway station on Tuesday, May 12. (Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News)

Jarvis’ reward for eradicating coronavirus from the subway is $5 an hour more than minimum wage — and some cleaners hired by other companies make even less.

A group of five workers hired to clean trains at the Forest Hills-71st Ave. station in Queens on Tuesday night told the Daily News they had no idea how much they were being paid. They didn’t even know the name of the company they were working for — Home Clean Home Inc.

“I won’t know until we get our checks,” said one cleaner at the station. “I think it’s some corporation that owns a corporation."

Employees of Fleetwash wipe the rails of an L train subway car in the 14th St./8th Ave. subway station on May 12. (Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News)

Some cleaners at the station expected to get about $15 an hour for their labor, while others heard rumors they would make $18 an hour.

The workers’ supervisor also had no idea what his subordinates were making.

On the first night of the shutdown, a group of six workers hired to clean subway cars walked off the job at the Flatbush Ave. station at the end of the Nos. 2 and 5 lines in Brooklyn. They said they weren’t given enough protective equipment and were worried about cleaning around homeless people sleeping on the trains.

Lily Sierra, CEO of LN Pro Services, which was contracted to clean the Flatbush Ave. station, said the cleaners were making $18 an hour for shifts during the day and $19 an hour if they work overnight.

Private cleaning crews are pictured on the J train platform at Parsons-Archer/Jamaica Center on Tuesday, May 12. (Clayton Guse/New York Daily News)

Hugo Benvenuto, chief operating officer at Modern Facility Services, said the people he hired to clean Queens’ Lefferts Blvd. station on the A line were paid “more than minimum wage, about $20 an hour.”

Cleaners employed by American Maintenance Inc. who worked on trains at the World Trade Center station at the end of the E line on Tuesday night said they made $20 an hour on weekdays and $25 an hour on weekends. One cleaner said he chose to work seven days a week in order to pay his bills.

A contractor cleans a 1 train at the South Ferry subway station in Manhattan, New York on Tuesday, May 12. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

The MTA rushed to hire private contractors to make good on Gov. Cuomo’s plan to shut down subways in the wee hours so trains and stations could be thoroughly cleaned. Cuomo announced the plan April 30, and the MTA implemented it May 6.

The job requires more workers than the MTA has in-house, especially as the agency’s workforce has been strained the past two months as thousands of employees have been out sick with COVID-19 or directed to quarantine at home. The agency also cut 66 cleaner positions last year.

Transit bosses sent out purchase orders to at least five companies to scrub trains in at least 14 end-of-line subway stations. The agreements did not specify how much the people hired by those companies should be paid — only that the contractors follow all “applicable wage and employment laws,” said MTA spokesman Ken Lovett.

“The MTA has undertaken the Herculean effort of cleaning the subway cars at least daily in order to keep our customers and workers safe at this unprecedented moment in history,” said Lovett. “We cannot do this without additional help.”

A contractor cleans a 1 train at the South Ferry subway station in Manhattan on Tuesday, May 12. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

The hastily hired workers make significantly less than the MTA’s unionized cleaners, who get $30 an hour plus health insurance, workers’ compensation, priority for COVID-19 testing — and a guaranteed $500,000 for their families if they die from the disease.

But even though they make much less, the private workers tend to do a more thorough job of scrubbing the trains — in part because they have no union to cause a fuss if they’re not protected.

Unionized cleaners are not allowed to wipe down trains at terminals when homeless people are aboard — but private cleaners at several stations one night last week were directed by their bosses to clean around people sleeping on trains.

MTA officials said the outside cleaners were not supposed to clean trains unless they were empty, noting that they would remind contractors about the policy.

Still, the MTA has few mechanisms to ensure the contractors follow the rules.

In some cases, a crew of about 12 has just five minutes to scrub the entirety of a 10-car train before it returns to service. That gives managers little time to ensure the cleaners avoid cars where homeless people are sleeping.

The private companies also have cleaning supplies the MTA can’t seem to get its hands on. When the subway shuts down overnight, the private companies “fog” the trains, according to Benvenuto, the boss at Modern Facility Services.

The fog he referred to is a relatively new form of electrostatic spray that Cuomo and transit officials said could protect surfaces from the virus for up to three months.

MTA officials in March came to an agreement with Tony Utano, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, that said the “fogging” work would be left to the unionized in-house crews after 90 days.

Utano said the private workers deserve to be paid as much as his members, especially given the dire health risks associated with cleaning a subway during a respiratory pandemic.

“It’s horrible what they’re being paid, but that’s the benefit of belonging to a union,” said Utano. “When this is over they’re going to need to hire more cleaners at the terminals. They cut dozens of cleaner jobs last year, and now they’re going to have to hire them back.””

Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg said the cleaners should be eligible for bonuses for risking their health along with the MTA’s in-house workers, but put the onus on the federal government to come up with the money.

It’s not clear how those payments would be doled out, or if outside cleaners who may be undocumented immigrants could even qualify.

In the meantime, many of the cleaners have no other way to put food on the table.

“I just want to help out and get paid,” said a cleaner at the Forest Hills-71st. Ave station last week. "I don’t know if I’m making what I should, but I need to get paid.”