Broadway cleaners have kept the Great White Way open — and now they’re fighting for wage increases

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 6/14/22 at 3:08pm

via Gothamist:

Broadway cleaners have kept the Great White Way open — and now they’re fighting for wage increases

"Another cleaner, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by her employer, has a similarly taxing schedule. She has worked on Broadway since 2009, and in the mornings is a head cleaner for one of the venues operated by the Nederlander Organization, where she cleans dressing rooms, seating areas, the box office and communal restrooms, and deals with scheduling issues for other workers.

At night, she works as an usher at a different theater, an arrangement that she said is becoming increasingly common for Broadway cleaners.

"They're not allowing us to do two jobs within the same company," she said. "So that's a little difficult for some people, but it's necessary. We do need to work two jobs in order to survive, especially in New York."

She said that her job as an usher is "a little more scary" because of the sheer volume of people she's around, but she is happy with how the theaters have maintained their COVID protocols and communicated well about safety measures, despite so many other industries dropping all pandemic precautions.

Even so, that doesn't mean she isn't vulnerable to getting sick.

"I actually caught COVID in December," she said. "I don't blame it on ushering, to be honest, because none of the ushers that I was around had COVID. But the actors had COVID. So I'm assuming I had gotten it from the actors, from cleaning their rooms."

Updated On: 6/14/22 at 03:08 PM