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.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Culture

Politics

3 December 2024

5 min read

The assisted dying debate revealed the real role of Parliament

MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers.

M. Ciftci

Mehmet Ciftci has a PhD in political theology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on bioethics, faith and politics.

An MP stands and speaks in a parliamentary debate.

MP Diane Abbott speaks in the debate.

Parliament TV.

What would be the effect of allowing assisted suicide for those ‘people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power and to have decisions made for them’, asked Danny Kruger MP, as he wrapped up his speech? ‘What are the safeguards for them? Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament; you and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.’

His words capture an important aspect of Friday’s debate: what is the point of Parliament? Do MPs meet to turn public opinion polls into policies? If the majority are in favour of something, do MPs have nothing left to do but to follow the public and sort out the fine details? We might instinctively say ‘Yes!’ It seems right and democratic to treat those whom we elect as people we select and send to do our bidding. And the polls do seem to show the majority of people supporting assisted suicide, at least in principle – although there are good reasons to be sceptical about those figures and about the conclusions drawn from them.

But there are numerous times when the majority are known to be in favour of something but politicians refuse to endorse it. Polls repeatedly show that a majority are in favour of reintroducing the death penalty. Why might it be right for MPs sometimes to ignore what the purported majority thinks and to use their own judgement?

Because Parliament is not just a debating chamber.

An older way of referring to it was to call it the ‘High Court of Parliament’ because ‘parliament, classically, was where individuals could seek the redress of grievances through their representatives,’ as law lecturer Dr Robert Craig writes. It performed its function admirably in response to the Horizon scandal: a legitimate grievance was brought to its attention, and it responded to redress the wrongs done to the sub-postmasters by passing a law to ‘overturn a series of judgments that could only have been obtained, and were only obtained, by a toxic, captured and wilfully blind corporate culture’.

Friday’s debate featured many MPs who understood what they were there to do. They acknowledged the ‘terrible plight of the people who are begging us for this new law’ as Danny Kruger said. But they also spoke up for those who were in danger of being harmed and wronged by the bill: the disabled and the dying, and all the vulnerable who were not there to speak on their own behalf.

Many echoed the concerns expressed by Diane Abbott about coercion: ‘Robust safeguards for the sick and dying are vital to protect them from predatory relatives, to protect them from the state and, above all, to protect them from themselves. There will be those who say to themselves that they do not want to be a burden. … Others will worry about assets they had hoped to leave for their grandchildren being eroded by the cost of care. There will even be a handful who will think they should not be taking up a hospital bed.’ And evidence of coercion is hard to find and trace: ‘Coercion in the family context can be about not what you say but what you do not say—the long, meaningful pause.’

An analysis shared on X by law lecturer Philip Murray found an association between the level of deprivation in a constituency and how likely a Labour MP was to vote against the bill. He also shared figures showing that 2/3 of MPs from ethnic minorities voted against it. In other words, MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers of helping people to kill themselves.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm.

But it seems that many MPs did not appreciate what the debate was about or what they had gathered to do. Layla Moran MP said: ‘The media are asking all of us, “Are you for or against the Bill?”, but I urge hon. Members to think about the question differently. The question I will be answering today is, “Do I want to keep talking about the issues in the Bill?”’ But James Cleverly MP intervened: “she is misrepresenting what we are doing at this point. We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill.” He was right to be impatient. Unlike the Oxford Union, the vote has consequences. Parliamentarians are not there merely to debate. As the term ‘High Court of Parliament’ suggests, when MPs (either on their own initiative or as a government) propose bills, what they are often doing is conveying a plea to redress some grievance, and their debates are to decide whether to respond by making laws to grant justice to the wronged.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm, because the scrutiny that the bill will undergo in the following stages is not likely to be as rigorous as with government bills. As a Private Member’s Bill, the assisted dying proposal is free to be scrutinised by a committee selected by the MP who has proposed the bill, i.e. Kim Leadbeater. When the bill reaches the stage for a final vote in the Commons at the third reading, no further amendments can be made and the time for debate is likely to be short.

It is rare but bills are sometimes defeated at the third reading. With eighteen abstentions on Friday and at least thirty-six MPs claiming they might change their minds later, there is still hope.

Each sitting of the Commons begins every day with a prayer by the Speaker’s Chaplain, who prays that MPs ‘may they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices, keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind.’

We can only hope and pray that at their next opportunity, MP will consider this bill in light of their responsibilities as the country’s High Court, charged with protecting the most vulnerable in society from harm.