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Dirty Work: Washing Hospital Laundry
Getting Soiled Linens Clean Is Dirty, Risky, Low-Paying Work
 Listen to David Molpus's report.
 Back to the Dirty Work series
In the soil room, laundry comes along the belt and workers sort out foreign objects wrapped in the sheets. It then moves on to be washed.
Photo: David Molpus, NPR News
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The laundry as it piles up on the floor after it's delivered by truck to the plant. The black spots are flies hovering around it.
Photo: David Molpus, NPR News
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Lunch at a work station. Workers simply throw a clean sheet over the filth. There's no cafeteria or clean place to eat nearby.
Photo: David Molpus, NPR News
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Sept. 2, 2002 -- If asked to list America's most dangerous jobs, most people probably would not mention cleaning laundry. But Bruce Raynor, president of a union that represents 40,000 laundry workers, says that handling sheets, towels, and gowns from hospitals can be risky. The linens are often soaked in hazardous fluids, and may contain medical instruments or even body parts.
NPR's David Molpus reports on hospital laundry workers, in the final installment of Morning Edition's six-part series on "dirty work."
Many of the workers profiled in the series, such as oil-tank cleaners, sewer workers, and fish gutters, say that while their work may leave them slimy, sweaty and physically exhausted, they still find satisfaction in it. However, says Molpus, industrial laundry workers are "a group with fewer rewards. Their jobs are among the most unpleasant and most dangerous in America."
Industrial laundry work is a field dominated by new immigrants -- mostly Hispanics and Haitians in New York. That's where Marie works in what's called the soil room on the ground floor of a multi-storied laundry. The soil room is the first stop for hospital linens that arrive from all over the city by truck -- dirty laundry that's been scooped off operating-room tables and hospital beds, thrown into bags, and brought in to be sorted by hand before washing.
Marie is not her real name; she asked Molpus to disguise her identity, so she could talk without putting her job at risk. She works in steaming heat in summer and roaring noise year-round. Her wooden worktable is across from an area piled several feet high with stained laundry, covered with swarming flies. At one end of her worktable is a large plastic bag, where she places most of the objects she finds among the linens: "We find needles, we find broken bottles... it's not good."
Though workers are offered plastic gloves when handling contaminated laundry, most Molpus saw "wore only cotton mittens, or nothing at all on their hands," he says. There is no company cafeteria. Most employees eat right at their worktables, after spreading a clean sheet over the filth.
While most industrial laundry work is done by women, men often do the heavy lifting jobs, such as moving loads of wet laundry along an elevated chain and into massive spinning vats. That's the job that Francesco Zapata, an immigrant from Honduras, does at a hospital laundry called Oceanside, on Long Island. Zapata says that this work is much better than other jobs he has held in Honduras or the United States, including washing cars and peeling vegetables in a kitchen. But a couple of years ago, he led a revolt at his plant against what he and others considered a corrupt union that tolerated wages just above $5 an hour.
The workers installed a new union, UNITE; and with new representation, workers got more health and safety instruction, easier access to drinking water and ice, tetanus and hepatitis vaccinations, better health insurance, and better pay. Zapata now makes $7.75 -- but the union and workers agree that wages are still meager and working conditions remain tough.
Zapata says he hopes his children will grow up to become engineers or lawyers -- not have a job like his. Marie, the soil room worker, dreams of becoming a laundry supervisor one day. "Then," she says, "I won't have to work so hard."
Other Resources
• Visit the web site of the laundry workers' union UNITE.
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