Cleaners who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic to disinfect the subway will recieve back pay after the city reached a settlement with two cleaning firms.
The city Comptroller’s Office on Tuesday said it reached a $3 million settlement with LN Pro Services, LLC and Fleetwash, Inc. to pay back wages for subway cleaners hired to clean and disinfect subways during the COVID-19 pandemic. LN Pro Services, LLC’s settlement totals $2,400,000; Fleetwash, Inc.’s settlement totals $606,686.80.
Under these settlements, the New York City Transit Authority, part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, will cover 100% of LN Pro’s settlement and 80% of Fleetwash’s settlement.
"The court agreed with us that the workers were entitled to prevailing wages – a higher rate than what the NYCTA instructed its contractors to pay," Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement. "Without these cleaners sanitizing and keeping our train system from piling up with debris, New York City would have had a much harder time getting moving again five years ago.”
During the height of the pandemic, NYCTA entered into contracts with private cleaning services to conduct deep cleaning and disinfecting work of subway cars within subway stations. The Office of the Comptroller sued two of the companies, Fleetwash, Inc. and LN Pro Services, LLC, in February 2024 after the conclusion of a multi-year prevailing wage investigation.
Despite the Comptroller’s Office informing the MTA NYCTA that cleaning subway cars required prevailing wages, the agency disagreed and continued to instruct the contractors that the work was not subject to prevailing wage requirements, arguing that even though the subway cars were cleaned while they were in the stations, it did not qualify as building service work.
While NYCTA contracts required prevailing wages for cleaners in the removal of trash and maintenance of cleanliness at subway stations, the requirement to pay prevailing wage rates was not included in the COVID contracts for the cleaning and disinfecting of train cars parked at terminal stations.
In November 2024, the New York City Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings ruled that NYCTA’s contracts covering hundreds of workers who cleaned subway cars during the COVID-19 pandemic were subject to prevailing wage requirements. OATH found that the work of cleaning and disinfecting subway cars qualifies as “building service work” under Article 9 of the New York Labor Law.
