An honest look at commercial cleaning
Let's be honest — commercial cleaning has some serious problems. And most people in the industry know it.
“You can tell when an industry has normalised bad behaviour. Commercial cleaning has.”
Cleaning employs more than 200,000 Australians in the commercial sector alone.[1] The workforce is heavily female and includes a high proportion of migrant workers — a workforce profile that has made the industry a long-standing focus area for modern-slavery and labour-exploitation regulators.[2] Collectively, cleaners are some of the most exploited workers in the formal Australian economy. The Fair Work Ombudsman has run multiple major industry-wide inquiries in the last decade — finding non-compliance rates of 75% and higher in cleaning supply chains it has audited.[3]
Here are the industry's worst habits — and what Clean Impact Co. does differently.
1. Underpaying the award, quietly.
Flat rates. Missed penalty rates. Rounded-down hours. Many cleaners in Australia are being paid less than they're legally owed. The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered roughly half a billion dollars in unpaid wages and entitlements in 2023–24 alone, across all industries — and cleaning is consistently named as a high-risk sector.[4]
What CIC does: every team member paid at or above the Cleaning Services Award (MA000022). Penalty rates applied. Super on time. It's built into our pricing, not worked around it.
2. Sham contracting.
Calling an employee a “contractor” to skip super, leave, and insurance is illegal. It's also common in cleaning. It's how cheap bids get that way.
What CIC does: everyone on the team is a PAYG employee. Permanent part-time, permanent casual, or permanent full-time. That's it.
3. Subcontracting chains you can't see.
“Cleaned by Company X” — who handed it to Labour Hire Y — who handed it to an individual you've never met. When something goes wrong, no one's accountable.
What CIC does: we don't subcontract our cleaning labour. We employ, roster, and supervise directly. One number to call.
4. Treating staff as interchangeable.
Rotating unfamiliar faces through a site is convenient for procurement. Everywhere else it's a disaster — inconsistent quality, missed handovers, and for the workers themselves, shifts that never quite add up to a full week.
What CIC does: we build stable teams. Same people, your site, every week.
5. Filtering out anyone who's not an “easy” hire.
Polished CVs. No gaps in employment. That filter screens out most of the people this industry is actually built on — parents returning to work, older workers, younger workers, people with disability, people rebuilding after a setback.
What CIC does: we hire for attitude and reliability. Not polish. Our model is built around shifts that work outside the 9-to-5 and return-to-work pathways.
If you're reviewing your cleaning contract
Three questions for your current provider:
• Can you show me a pay stub demonstrating award compliance?
• Who actually cleans our site — employees or subcontractors?
• What portion of our spend lands in a local household?
If any of those answers are vague, get in touch.
Got a site that needs cleaning differently?
We work across the Northern Rivers — Byron Bay, Lennox Head, Ballina, Lismore, and everywhere in between. Tell us about your site and we'll book a 30-minute walkthrough.
SOURCES
[1] Australians employed in commercial cleaning — IBISWorld, "Commercial Cleaning Services in Australia" employment report — 204,560 people employed in commercial cleaning as of 2024.
[2] Cleaning workforce demographics and modern-slavery risk profile — Australian Human Rights Commission, "Tackling modern slavery and labour exploitation with the Cleaning Accountability Framework" — identifies cleaning as a key risk area for modern slavery and labour exploitation in Australia.
[3] FWO non-compliance rates in cleaning industry inquiries — Fair Work Ombudsman, "Wages recovered for stadium cleaners" media release (Oct 2020) — 7 of 9 cleaning companies (78%) at major Australian stadiums were non-compliant with workplace laws. Earlier FWO inquiry (Feb 2018) into Woolworths' Tasmanian supermarket cleaning supply chain found contractors at 90% of sites non-compliant.
[4] FWO total wage recovery 2023–24 — Fair Work Ombudsman annual recovery figures — A$473 million in unpaid employee entitlements recovered in 2023–24, lifting the three-year total to A$1.5 billion. Cleaning is named consistently across FWO compliance reports as a high-risk industry. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/compliance-and-enforcement/reporting-outcomes/activity-reports
