Migliaccio & Rathod LLP is investigating whether janitors who cleaned downtown Washington DC office buildings were denied minimum wages, overtime, paid sick leave, or pay for all required work.
What is the issue?
Commercial cleaners are frequently employed through multiple layers of contractors. A property owner or building manager may retain a large cleaning company, which may assign work through a franchise, staffing company, labor broker, or smaller subcontractor.
Workers may be called independent contractors or franchise owners even though the cleaning company establishes the building, schedule, checklist, inspection system, uniform requirements, and compensation.
Other workers may be treated as hourly employees but required to complete more work than can reasonably be performed during the paid shift, resulting in unpaid time before clock-in or after clock-out.
Janitors may have experienced:
- Being paid a flat amount per building or floor regardless of actual hours.
- Receiving a Form 1099 despite working under close supervision.
- Cleaning before the scheduled shift or after clocking out.
- Unpaid time collecting supplies or traveling between nearby buildings.
- Automatic meal deductions during short overnight shifts.
- Unpaid overtime when working at several buildings.
- Deductions for keys, badges, uniforms, equipment, supplies, transportation, insurance, or customer complaints.
- No paid sick and safe leave.
- Pay below minimum wage after deductions and business expenses.
- Missing final wages after losing a building assignment.
Signs you may be affected
- You worked as a janitor, cleaner, custodian, porter, floor technician, or other building-services employee in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building.
- You worked for a cleaning, staffing, or facilities contractor rather than directly for the building owner or tenant.
- You performed required cleaning duties before or after your scheduled shift without being paid for all of your time.
- You worked more than 40 hours in a week but did not receive proper overtime pay.
- Your paycheck did not include the required contract wage, fringe benefits, or all hours you worked.
- Your employer automatically deducted meal breaks even though you continued performing assigned cleaning duties.
Washington D.C. law may permit workers to pursue the company that directly paid them and, in some circumstances, companies higher in the contracting chain.
If you performed janitorial, cleaning, custodial, porter, floor-care, sanitation, trash-removal, recycling, building-attendant, maintenance-support, or other building-services work at a downtown Washington office property and believe you were misclassified or underpaid, please contact Migliaccio & Rathod LLP through the form below, by email at [email protected], or by telephone at (202) 470-3520.