First Published 2004, ISBN 1-904860-03-06

A day in the life

Imagine if all the cleaners in this country went on strike. Every single one of them. The country would honestly grind to a halt in a matter of days. Quicker than if petrol ceased to flow or if there was a water shortage, or a firefighter strike or even, dare I say it, a terrorist atrocity. It would affect business, industry, commerce, education, transport, leisure and health. No-one would be untouched. Everyone would notice. And if you think that's overplaying it, would you notice too much if your boss wasn't in for a few days? Would you notice if the cleaner wasn't?  Dirty toilets, no loo rolls, overflowing bins, unwashed cups, and don't even mention sanitary disposal units. It doesn't bear thinking about.

You would expect, therefore that being a cleaner has enormous prestige and status, especially when you realise it is estimated that 850,000 people are employed in the industry, and that it is worth £10billion a year. They should have great training, a career path, 360° appraisals, best practice awards, appear on Parkinson. Cleanliness is, after all, next to godliness. Or is it that cleaners are not next to god but are like god? Unseen, unheard and generally without recognition, until you really really need them, in which case you pray they will help you out; you first rather than some other deserving soul. So why does cleaning have such a poor image, because it hasn't always been like that?

Cleaning was cool once, honest

Post War Britain through to the end of the 1950's was the peak of recognition of cleanliness. It was a cult thing. At this point being clean to the highest standards was a top priority. A pre-occupation with dirt, grime, germs and clean homes had real social cachet. It also required skill, time and hard work. Mrs. Beeton, Good Housekeeping magazine and the Good Housekeeping Institute (GHI) were devoted to cleanliness and how to be good at cleaning, especially in the kitchen. GHI had a bevy of domestic experts, engineers, chemists and space planners, who passed on their advice. They would explain manual techniques to make you a better cleaner, and assess new appliances and products to assist you to reach cleaning nirvana. Annually, a whole issue of Good Housekeeping would be devoted to spring cleaning, and links to clean homes being happy and healthy homes were regularly made:

"Healthy homes go a long way towards being happy homes. First and foremost have a clean house, really clean. Get rid not only of obvious dirt but of the insidious underneath sort - and not just in great twice a year turnouts that leave your home disinfected like a hospital, but in a regular day to day chores that are second nature to you. . .  This high standard of hygiene is not something that has to be worked at too consciously . . . it is simply a standard that can perfectly easily be maintained in a daily routine, that will not only keep your home fresh and gay, but a safe and secure place for the family to grow up in."

The connection with safety and security began to emerge significantly in the early 1960s. In a 1961 supplement, it was made perfectly clear that to safeguard your family against ill health, you should adopt a high standard of cleanliness;

"germs are far less likely to thrive in a really clean home . . . the deep down hygiene of your home is still a most important factor in preserving your family's bright good health."

To conform to these cultural and societal expectations did require technique and understanding. The housewife was a prominent figure in the 1950's particularly. She had an important role in the household and the work she carried out did have status and recognition. The problem at the time, one that we are facing now, was the invisibility of her achievements and of her experiences. The nature of the job is a major barrier in seeing that there is skill involved. I understand this well: When I was at home with two small children, my husband left a clean and tidy house when he went to work in the morning. The kids completely trashed the place during the day with their sticky fingers, painting and baking activities and general aptitude for demolition. We tidied and cleaned late in the afternoon, and he returned home in the evening, with the house looking the same as he left it. The work involved in returning to clean and tidy domesticity was exhausting. To him it was entirely invisible. I can only guess that his perception was it remained the same throughout the day, so what the hell had I been doing with my time!

Although there is no readily available evidence, it is reasonable to assume that cleaning in industry or commerce, was seen in the same light. My grandmother was in domestic service; a cleaner for a rich family with a house that looked out over Regent's Park. It was a respectable job and had a career structure, and she was trained how to do things precisely as the housekeeper wanted. I also remember going into hospital in the early 1960s as a very young child for a week or two. I don't know whether it was any less clean than now, but the matron sticks in my mind to this day. Frightening and unaware of the concept of customer service, she ruled the ward with a rod of iron. She could have been the twin sister of Hattie Jacques, if you're old enough to know who that is. But I bet she had a lot to say about the cleanliness of the ward - when it was done, where and exactly how. The cleaners would have been petrified but I am sure they were recognised for their contribution to the battle against germs and the spread of secondary infections. So why has it all changed?

If the 1950s was the peak of recognition for cleaning, the decline began from the late 1960s. There were a number of reasons including societal changes, the rise of an extensive market in cleaning products and appliances and the squeeze on company costs and time.

The times they are a changing

Society, the family and particularly the role of women has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. As women began to get a tertiary education, get paid work after marriage as well as before, and generally enter the job market seriously, the time left for cleaning declined. In any case, as singles and couples began to have disposable income, wouldn't you rather go to the pub than wash the kitchen floor? As families have fragmented mothers are less likely to pass on their knowledge of cooking and cleaning, especially as societal status for females could be achieved through a career rather than housekeeping - better to get your daughter to do her homework than learn how to starch a collar. If children have not been taught cleaning techniques and adults are less inclined to clean because they have better things to do, the job itself becomes a chore and a burden.

In the immediate pre- and post-war years there wasn't much choice of cleaning products; Dettol, Ajax and Flash ruled the supermarket shelves, and you had to put in a bit of elbow grease to make them work. The rise of an extensive market in cleaning materials and appliances now vie for our intention, and there are even products that clean and kill all the germs for you, without the need to use a cloth or wipe anything! I have a blue toilet thing hung underneath the loo seat. As the toilet is flushed it spreads nice smelling disinfectant around the bowl, and even makes the water go blue. It gives the loo the appearance and smell of something very clean. But is it really clean unless I role my sleeves up and have a good poke round with a toilet brush and some bleach?

I have a self-cleaning oven. What does that mean? Do I never have to clean it, will there never be any mould or greasy bits? But my favourite one is my kitchen chopping board that uses a technology called Microban. It has an in-built anti-microbial product that keeps my board cleaner and fresher between cleanings, for the life of the product. How? The choice is huge too. I have to make sure that I don't just buy any old floor cleaner, it has to be the right one for my bathroom tiles, or that the kitchen cleaner suits the worktop surface we have. Things are so complicated now, it's no wonder we don't know how to clean.

The real problem for industrial cleaning however has not been the technology, but the insistence by businesses to award contracts to the cheapest supplier. When I first started work there was a tea lady and a cleaning lady and they were employed by the company, just like I was. Nobody seems to employ their own cleaners now, they sub-contract the hassle to a cleaning agency. You don't get to know your cleaner, which means you don't get to appreciate what they do. They arrive before you start work or after you've left. An unseen, unappreciated army. The agency that employs them has usually been contracted because they are the cheapest, which means they pay the cheapest wages. To get the contract on price they probably don't train their staff much or give them decent equipment - you can't if you have to pare costs down to the minimum.

It's a long standing joke in the cleaning industry that when it comes to cleaning contracts businesses recruit on price and fire on quality. It's a never ending downward spiral, but like most things in life if you want a good job done to a consistently high standard you have to pay for it.

Since the 1970s I think we have been increasingly lulled into a false sense of security with these developments. We believe the chemicals and technology will do all the work for us, and it must be OK because it looks and smells clean mustn't it? But the newspapers tell a different story. Deaths through food poisoning scares such as listeria and botulism, the relatively high incidence of catching and dying of a secondary infection in hospital, these are all effects of poor hygiene and lack of training. And what with cleaning companies winning contracts because they are the cheapest amongst the competition, it's no wonder cleaning has gone from hero to zero. But there may be some light at the end of the tunnel . . .

From zero to hero?

Perhaps its because cleaners have to work anti-social hours when the rest of us are at home, or asleep or enjoying ourselves, that makes them so invisible to the public. With the effects of the 24 hour economy particularly in city centres, posing resource and staff safety issues it's not surprising that retention is difficult and it's obvious that not enough investment is put into training. This is because businesses and councillors want to pay as little as possible for cleaning services, and the knock-on effect is poor wages and poor staff retention. You don't need to be Einstein to work out that if we paid more for cleaning, we could train staff more thoroughly, and they'd hang around a bit longer.

But not everyone travels through cleaning as a temporary job. The industry is full of unsung heroes who have a real sense of community service, who every week remove the physical evidence that the rest of us have trashed our streets, our workplaces and our leisure outlets. We should shout louder about the contribution they play, and we must educate business to appreciate them and stop hiring on price.

Since becoming a member of the British Cleaning Council, I have become more aware of the dangers that cleaners face. We have begun to search for stories on cleaning, and are beginning to raise its profile in the media. When doing this research, we have spoken to some incredible people, cleaners who have done their job for years and are proud to do so. The most impressionable for me, was a lady who cleans in a multi-storey car park. She explained to me how she gets abuse from the drunks and drug addicts that lie in the stairwells. How she carefully mops up their vomit, human faeces and occasionally blood spatters from drug injection or a fight they've been involved in. To her it was all in a day's work!. When I asked if she had been trained on dealing with discarded syringes, she said that she hadn't. I didn't ask if she knew about the risk of infection from blood or faeces or whether she was issued with special gloves or equipment to dispose of needles . I couldn't bring myself.

Another explained to me how they clean up a Manchester city centre street on a Saturday morning, before designer-clad shoppers arrive to go to Selfridges. The empty fast food boxes, beer bottles, streams of urine, discarded used condoms and cigarette ends all swept and washed away. Manchester has a booming night-time economy generating profits for a whole range of businesses. It's a buzzing city in the early hours exciting and noise fuelled by alcohol, cigarettes and occasionally drugs, but little evidence remains when families arrive just six or seven hours later to shop 'til they drop.

The British Cleaning Council is determined to get these heroes the respect, training and pay they deserve. I hope you will hear a lot more from us in the future, not to promote our own name but to bring to the attention of the nation the role of cleaning and cleaners, and the immense contribution it, and they, play.

Perhaps we could start by having a cleaning holiday?

REFERENCES AND SOURCES

• Ehrenreich, B and English D, For Her Own Good: 150 years of the experts' advice to women, Pluto Press 1979
• Horsfield, M, Biting the Dust: the joys of housework, Fourth Estate 1998
• Leiss, W and Kline, S, Social Communication in Advertising, Routledge 1990
• Walker, A, Food Safety in the Home, HMSO 1996
• White, C, Women's Magazines: 1693 - 1968, Michael Joseph 1970

Sue Nelson 2004