Eridania Rodriguez’s Story Leads To Concern Over Safety Of Cleaning Personnel

The recent murder of 46-year-old cleaning woman Eridania Rodriguez has left us wondering about the safety of cleaning personnel - especially those who happen to be women and immigrants. When she was first reported missing, it was mentioned that Rodriquez had been nervous about her place of work not because she often had to clean alone on empty floors late into the night, but also because a recently fired worker kept returning to the building while Rodriguez was working. After her body was found stuffed into one of the office building’s air vents, it was revealed that she had been planning to leave her job that same week due to myriad safety concerns, including harassment by an employer who was transferred, not fired, who had exposed himself to her. It’s unclear whether this is the same employee referred to in earlier reports. So the question is: Why wasn’t anyone else concerned to the point of action by Eridania’s fears?

It’s never especially helpful to play “if only…,” but we’re sure that such fears and allegations would have been handled differently had Eridania been a white-collar employee if only because she’d have an HR department of some sort making sure the situation didn’t become a liability for the company. That this mother of three was so troubled by her experiences that she was willing to leave her source of income gives some insight into the extent of her fear. And yet no security measures (that we know of) were set in place to ensure her safety. No serious consequences were given to the employee who exposed himself to her. 

VivirLatino also hit upon other fears and dangers impacting cleaning personnel in their initial reports on Rodriguez’s disappearance:

I see many women going to and from their overnight jobs cleaning ofice buildings in Manhattan from my ‘hood. I know some of these women personally. Overwhelmingly they are Latina immigrants, who start their shifts just when the sun starts to set and return in the early pre-dawn before the sun has risen again. Safety is always an issue when they travel via subway, especially when they return home. This is why many travel in groups and are met at the subway by a relative. Eridania Rodríguez never got that far. 

This situation reminds us of the case of DC metro crash victim Ana Fernandez, a native of El Salvador whose family was inundated with phone calls questioning Fernandez’s legal status following her death. Most media reports on Fernandez’s death described her as “cleaning woman Ana Fernandez,” as if her occupation was somehow intrinsic to her being and personhood - or even played any sort of factor in her death.

We’re additionally reminded of the brutal murder of Marcelo Lucero, a Long Island resident who was stabbed to death in his driveway as his attackers yelled racial and xenophobic slurs. Lucero was also involved in a cleaning-related occupation and, despite having lived in the United States for 16 years, was still referred to as an “immigrant” in reports about his death. Suffolk Country Executive Steve Levy referred to Lucero’s murder as a “one-day story” and professed to be incredulous at the amount of media coverage the story had received. Because you know: Immigrants who aren’t rich don’t merit headlines when they’re slaughtered. 

It’s this attitude that women, immigrants and cleaning staff are somehow interchangeable, expendable or somehow less than others that makes us hope - and call for - more serious security measures to ensure that the people who clean up the messes we don’t have to deal with aren’t treated as being the equivalent of the trash they pick up.