Cleaning up cleaning: the problem with split shift work

Unhealthy and unnecessary working practices impact unseen cleaners. It doesn’t have to be like that argues Ryan Gilfeather.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A cleaner sweeps between large white interior walls of a concourse.

Photo by Verne Ho on Unsplash.

In offices across the country cleaners are often kept out of sight whilst the other workers do their jobs. Cleaners are instead brought in for two short shifts, the first starting as early as 1, 2 or 3 am, and a second beginning around 8pm. Most of us overlook this pattern of work, taking for granted that it is necessary.

However, dig a little deeper, and its insidious nature emerges. We begin to see how it is mostly unnecessary and harms the flourishing of cleaners in their health, family, and dignity. It treats small financial gains as worth more than human lives.

For many industries, cleaning does not need to happen in the early mornings and late nights. Consider the downsides of daytime cleaning. The cleaner would need to manoeuvre around colleagues at their desks and in meeting rooms, but they would still clean to a high standard in a similar timeframe. Their job does not need to be done during unsociable hours. There is a minor cost to the company in the office. The office worker might need to briefly step away from their desk for a moment as it is cleaned, they may be momentarily distracted by the sound of a hoover, and a meeting room may be out of action for a very short time. The only costs would be a tiny loss in efficiency and profits to the companies who hire these cleaners. Since the negative consequences of daytime cleaning, instead of split shifts at unsociable hours, are so marginal, the current working patterns are clearly unnecessary.

No choice, compelled to say yes

Importantly, these cleaners often do not have any other choice. I meet many of these cleaners in my work at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work. None of them choose to work split shifts at unsociable hours. For many, employment with better conditions is simply not available. About 27 per cent are migrants and often they lack English-speaking skills, preventing them from getting other kinds of jobs. 59 per cent have attained an education below the equivalent of C or 4 at GCSE, so it is hard for them to find other work. 17 per cent are ethnic minorities, who face greater barriers accessing other kinds of work. They have to work, they often have no better choices than cleaning, and in this industry they cannot say no to these working patterns. In this way, they are compelled to say yes to these kinds of split shifts.

Split shifts deadly consequences

This working pattern damages health. A recent medical study demonstrates that working night shifts, a similar pattern to split shifts, more than doubles the odds of developing breast cancer Another study shows that shift-work disturbs worker’s circadian rhythms. This in turn leads to problems with cancer, heart health, mental health, and more. Split shifts have deadly consequences for cleaner’s health.

Eroding family time

Split shifts also steal cleaner’s time from their families. When cleaners earn below the real living wage, their family relationships suffer; 48 per cent say that their wage level has negatively affected their relationship with their children. For many, poverty wages force cleaners to take on two or more jobs. As Angus Ritchie, an Anglican priest, academic, and campaigner for marginalised communities puts it, poverty wages force workers to:

‘to choose between spending enough time with their children and having enough money to provide for them.’

These cleaners, who are often on poverty wages too, may only be able to briefly see their children between the end of school and the beginning of the nightshift, but will miss out on caring for them in the morning and enjoying extended periods of quality time. Therefore, when employers unnecessarily force these working hours upon cleaners, it also harms their relationships with their families.

Denying dignity

These patterns of work also render cleaners invisible. In an Equality and Human Rights Commission report from 2014, cleaners spoke about how they were made to feel ‘invisible’ and like the ‘lowest of the low.’ It is hardly surprising that they have this experience when the patterns of work we force upon them are designed to literally stop office workers from seeing them. Cleaners do crucial work which enables the broader enterprise of offices all around the country to function, yet they remain hidden away, their existence and contribution unseen and unacknowledged. Needless to say, these unnecessary split shifts take away their dignity.

Why value humanity

Campaigning to oppose this practice are Christians. Here’s why. The Bible and its tradition teaches that all human beings share the same inextinguishable value. As part of the story of creation says,

“God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.”

Over the centuries Christians have interpreted this passage as affirming the same fundamental value of every person as one made in the image of God. Every person in some way dimly mirrors God’s inestimable goodness and love, and is, therefore, of greater value than all the riches of the world. To treat someone as less valuable than us or material goods is to deny the reality of how God created the world.

Split shifts at unsociable hours, however, represents the opposite belief. As argued above, these patterns of working are largely unnecessary, and only lead to small financial gains for the companies who hire the cleaners through tiny increases in efficiency. However, these small riches are treated as worth more than the flourishing of lives which are of inestimable value because they are made in the image of God. Fractional gains in money are placed above their ongoing health, their family relationships, and their dignity through recognition. These meagre financial rewards are more treasured than the flourishing of lives made in the image of God.

The working patterns are bad for cleaners. Not just because they damage health, but more fundamentally, because they deny the reality of God’s desire for creation. Enforcing split-shifts in pursuit of financial gain values small amounts of money above the flourishing of human beings, the infinitely valuable image of God, in their health, family, and dignity.

Christians are beginning to oppose this practice. For example, in 2017, three Christian organisations (Centre for Theology and Community, Church Mission Society, and the church, St Andrew by the Wardrobe) launched Clean for Good. This ethical cleaning company treats cleaners fairly; they pay the Real Living Wage and give holiday leave, sick pay, training and guaranteed working hours. Crucially, they also don’t force cleaners into working anti-social hours. They offer cleaners working conditions and hours which enable them to flourish in their health, family, and dignity, because they truly believe that these workers are infinitely valuable, being made in the image of God.

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21 October 2024

2 min read

Do we feel guilt for Liam Payne’s death?

We want the celebrity world to exist, but it returns terrible violence.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

A crowd of teenagers gather by a Peter Pan statue to mourn a dead pop star

A fan vigil beside a Peter Pan Statue, London.

Sky News.

It’s no secret that fame is a poisoned chalice. Those reading about Liam Payne, the former One Direction star who died last week, will have noticed the theme: denied privacy, loaded with unbearable expectations, in a milieu where illegal substances were too much to hand - what chance did he have? The word ‘tragedy’ is scattered across multiple headlines.

One young Telegraph writer sees it as a generational trauma: “our first celebrity-induced reminder that life can be cruel, and fleeting”. Formerly Elvis, or John Lennon, now Payne; plus ça change. But what really haunts our society about Payne’s death is not a feeling it was unavoidable. It is, rather, our guilt: did we do this? Our rapacious appetites, consumer needs, and reckless licensing of rock-’n-roll form - did we tie this teen idol to the sacrificial altar?

Religious language is not inappropriate: thousands in cities around the world are holding vigils to Payne’s memory, and these shrines would have interested René Girard, who had a theory about how society works. While staying “a few pages ahead of the students” in French novels at Indiana University during the late 1950s, Girard noticed that humans want things, but not because of innate desires. We want things because other humans want them. There is always this undercurrent of rivalry to our world, even amongst close friends - in fact, especially for those whose goals are most similar.

What becomes of this collective aggression? It has to be banished through scapegoating. It’s everyone against one; a victim is butchered. For Girard, culture is what happens when a group achieves temporary peace in the wake of a sacrificial death. The bubble of built-up tension has burst, and an epoch of nonviolence means we get on with civilisation. We raise the kids, build some structures, or write a poem.

Religious mourning for Payne reveals these sacrificial contours of our culture. We want the celebrity world to exist, for its fantasies, desirable bodies, and danger. But it returns terrible violence - exploitation, harassment, and rejection (Payne’s own solo career had not kept him at the thrilling toppermost of the chart). The death of a victim sobers us up, momentarily, from our intoxication. But how long until we repeat it again?

Girard converted to Catholicism in 1959, after he encountered in the Gospels a religion that acknowledged these human trends, and offered a solution. It still required imitation - of Jesus Christ - but without the threat of rivalry. But in the crucifixion was a scapegoating that did not seem to leave things open to repetition. It had finished something, for good. Sunday morning yielded a new kind of peace.