News article
The invisible hotel cleaner
Lying on the floor cleaning toilets with a microfiber cloth. Guests changing clothes in front of you. Using strong cleaning products to scrub the remnants of a glitter bomb out of a jacuzzi. These were some of the tasks that greeted cultural geographer Maria Thulemark and two of her research colleagues when they set out to work as hotel cleaners as part of a study on hotel cleaners’ work environment and conditions.
Maria Thulemark is a senior lecturer in cultural geography at Dalarna University. In a study on hotel cleaners’ working conditions, she and two colleagues joined the cleaning staff in their daily work. By placing themselves in the cleaners’ environment, the researchers experienced firsthand different aspects of the job, such as invisibility, language barriers, and the physical strain.
– By trying hotel cleaning ourselves, we gained a completely different understanding of what we were writing about. Previous research has, for example, shown how physically demanding the work is – hotel cleaning is the most strenuous occupation. People develop serious shoulder problems and use the same muscles for long periods of time in awkward positions, says Maria.
Research that took time
The idea for the research project came out of conversations with the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union in Sweden.
– Hotel cleaners’ voices are rarely heard, and there is not much research on the profession. We wanted to study their work environment, working conditions, who they are, and why they work in this occupation.
The researchers worked between one and two weeks at a total of five hotels. The hotels were located in both large cities and rural areas, had different target groups, and all had collective agreements.
Being out cleaning themselves gave the researchers time to build relationships and talk with the cleaning staff. Unlike a one-hour interview, they now had days to observe the workers’ conditions and listen to their stories.
Maria particularly remembers the story of a man in his twenties. Other cleaners had mentioned him – how he folded bathrobes in a magically neat way. One of the researchers eventually met him in the laundry room and saw how quickly and skillfully he folded the bathrobes to perfection. “Wow!” she said. “You fold them beautifully.” The man explained that he had worked in the textile industry for a long time.
He had arrived in Sweden as an unaccompanied refugee child and had not been here very long. He still had not received permanent residency. As a child, he had worked as child labor sewing clothes. That was when he learned how to fold garments quickly and efficiently.
– It turned out he was the one who always worked the hardest, who never left anything for someone else to finish the next day. That probably came from the work ethic he had developed – that you don’t keep your job unless you give it your very best.
Trying hotel cleaning ourselves gave us a completely different understanding of what we were writing about.
Maria Thulemark
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Dalarna University
Neither allowed nor wanting to be seen
Invisibility is a major part of a hotel cleaner’s everyday life. Maria and her colleagues experienced how guests would not greet them, but also how they themselves avoided being seen – not wanting to disturb or inconvenience guests. The work had to be visible, but not the cleaners’ bodies.
Maria also tried to make herself invisible to avoid being given more work. The pace is high in Swedish hotels, especially since wages are higher than in many other countries and it is expensive to employ many cleaners.
– I learned to find micro-breaks, for example by lingering a little longer in a room. It’s a stressful and physically heavy job with no breaks – you have one lunch break and that’s the only time you sit down.
Several different cultures met in the cleaning groups. Many did not speak Swedish, and language barriers were part of everyday life. Often Maria had to step in as a translator, since she spoke both Swedish and English.
Exploited by employers or guests
The staff told of various forms of exploitation. Some recounted being taken advantage of by previous employers who expected them to work unpaid overtime to finish a certain number of rooms each day. At one of the hotels where the researchers worked, a male guest had also made it a habit to be naked when the cleaners entered. The female cleaners did not want to enter the room, but instead of going to their manager, they asked a male colleague to take care of it.
In the project, Maria and her colleagues draw on Agenda 2030 and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals on decent work.
– It’s important that people have dignified jobs – work that you can live on, with fair conditions and where you are not exploited.
Jennie Aquilonius (English translation by Forte)
