Who Is Actually Cleaning Your Building: Janitorial Labor, Safety and Liability
The people cleaning your building are employed by whichever company puts them on its payroll, and that may not be the janitorial company named on your contract. Behind the contract there can be a staffing agency, a subcontractor, a franchisee, or workers paid as independent contractors. To know who is actually cleaning your building, ask your vendor to name the legal employer of every person assigned to your site, and to show who screens, trains, supervises and insures each of them.
The answer matters because each labor arrangement puts the background check, the training record, the workers' comp policy and the supervisor in a different place, and some put them with a company you have never signed anything with. This guide covers how the crew is employed, what to verify before anyone gets a badge, what OSHA expects when two employers share a facility, and what an incident investigation needs when the injured person works for someone else. It is written for the people who carry that exposure: the plant manager, the EHS manager, and whoever in procurement or at a public agency signs the paper.
Reviewed by Brittany Keller, Sales Director at McLemore Building Maintenance, who reviews janitorial bids and builds staffing plans for commercial, industrial, education and public-sector facilities.
This guide at a glance
- Who employs the people cleaning your building?
- How does janitorial labor reach a building?
- What should a background check requirement cover?
- How do you verify training for your crew?
- Whose workers' comp responds when a custodian is hurt?
- How is misclassification different from subcontracting?
- What does OSHA expect in a shared facility?
- How do you read a vendor's safety record?
- Who is accountable on the night shift?
- What does an incident investigation need?
- What documents should you request?
Further down: where McLemore fits.
Who employs the people cleaning your building?
Before insurance limits, scope or price, get a straight answer to one question from every bidder and from your current vendor, whichever step of the full sequence for buying janitorial services you are on:
Can you name, today, the legal employer of every person who works in our building?
Then ask the follow-up: what percentage of the staff assigned to our site are direct employees of your company? A vendor that layers labor through agencies or subcontractors may need to check with those companies before it can answer, which is reasonable. What you are looking for is a complete answer, in writing, with names and payroll records to back it up.
Plenty of vendors describe themselves as self-performing. The claim is worth less than the evidence, so ask each one to show it for your building.
How does janitorial labor reach a building?
Janitorial companies staff accounts in four basic ways, and a single company may use more than one across its portfolio. The table below summarizes how responsibility typically falls under each model. Arrangements vary by contract and by state, so treat the right-hand column as the questions to verify for your site.
| Model | Who hires and pays the crew | Who runs the background check | Whose workers' comp should respond | Questions to verify |
| Direct W-2 employment | The contracted vendor | The vendor, to its own standard | The vendor's policy | Is the whole assigned crew on the vendor's payroll? Who supervises on site? |
| Staffing agency labor | An agency the vendor contracts with | The agency, unless the vendor sets the standard | Usually the agency's policy, depending on the agency agreement | Who directs the work day to day? Who do you call after hours? |
| Subcontracted crews | A second cleaning company | The subcontractor, to whatever standard the prime requires | The subcontractor's policy, if it carries coverage | Does the prime set and audit screening and training? Whose supervisor is on site? |
| Franchise or 1099 labor | A franchisee, or individuals paid as independent contractors | Varies by franchisee | Depends on the franchisee's coverage; workers classified as independent contractors may not be covered by an employer's policy | Is each worker correctly classified? Which entity's policy covers them? |
None of these is automatically illegitimate. Subcontracting a specialty like high-rise windows is normal, and a prime contractor can run a well-controlled subcontracted program. When labor is subcontracted, ask what the prime contractor keeps: whether it sets the screening standard, audits the training records, supervises on site, and remains responsible to you under the contract for everyone who works there. The problem to avoid is an arrangement you cannot see, where you believe you bought the first row and are actually getting the third.
What should a background check requirement cover?
"All staff are background checked" does not tell you what the check covers. Ask for the standard in writing:
- What the check covers (criminal history by county and state, sex offender registry, identity verification, E-Verify where used)
- How far back it looks, and which convictions disqualify
- Whether checks are rerun periodically or only at hire
- How long a new hire can work on site before results come back
- Who holds the records, and whether you can audit them
The last point deserves attention. If the checks were run by an agency two contracts removed from you, the vendor may not be able to produce them when your security team or an auditor asks. For schools, government buildings and secured industrial sites, add your own requirements, such as fingerprinting, badging or escort rules, and confirm the vendor's onboarding can meet them without stalling the start date.
How do you verify training for your crew?
A janitorial crew in an industrial or public building handles chemicals, runs floor machines, works around forklifts and production lines, and sometimes enters spaces with lockout or confined-space rules. Two layers of training apply.
The employer trains its people on its own chemicals and equipment. OSHA's Hazard Communication standard requires employers to train employees on the hazardous chemicals they work with, so that obligation sits with whoever employs the custodian. If that employer is an agency, ask how the agency knows what products are used in your building.
You train them on your site. The vendor does not know your hazards until you tell it: restricted areas, lockout zones, forklift traffic lanes, the chemicals your own process uses. That orientation should be documented, repeated when crews change, and signed.
Ask for training records by name for the people assigned to your site. A company training manual shows the program exists; the individual records show whether this crew went through it.
Whose workers' comp responds when a custodian is hurt?
When a custodian is hurt in your building, the first question is whose workers' comp responds. With direct W-2 employment, the vendor's policy is the starting point. With layered labor, it depends on whether each company in the chain carries coverage and whether that coverage is current.
Depending on the state, if a worker's direct employer has no coverage, the injured worker may be able to pursue a claim against a company further up the contracting chain. How far up that can reach, and under what conditions, is set by state law and by the contracts involved. Ask your risk team or counsel how your state treats it and whether it could reach your organization, then write the requirements into the contract:
- Certificates of insurance for the vendor and every subcontractor or agency that will supply labor to your site
- Workers' comp confirmed for each entity, not only the prime contractor
- A contractual obligation to notify you before any new labor source is used on your account
A certificate is a summary, and it does not create coverage on its own. The Texas Department of Insurance notes that a certificate does not confer rights beyond the underlying policy, and that additional insured status depends on the policy being endorsed. Have your risk team verify the policy language and endorsements behind each certificate.
How is misclassification different from subcontracting?
Subcontracting is a legitimate business structure; the question it raises is visibility. Misclassification, where people who should be employees are paid as independent contractors, is a legal problem, and it can shift wage and injury exposure in ways you never agreed to. Where a buyer is exposed, the exposure is inherited from the vendor's structure.
In July 2026, janitors at a California grocery chain filed a class action naming both the retailer and its janitorial contractor, alleging they were paid as independent contractors through layers of subcontracting. According to Supermarket News, the state Labor Commissioner had already cited the companies more than $1 million, including for the use of unregistered janitorial companies. These are allegations, and none of it has been decided in court. The case still shows where a subcontracted cleaning arrangement can end up, with the buyer's name on the complaint.
Knowing who you are buying from is the practical defense. Ask how the crew is paid, ask for proof, and require notice before the labor source changes.
What does OSHA expect in a shared facility?
A janitorial crew working in your plant or public building makes the site a multi-employer worksite. Under OSHA's multi-employer citation policy, more than one employer can be cited for the same hazard. The policy describes four roles: the employer that created the hazard, the employer whose workers were exposed to it, the employer responsible for correcting it, and the employer with general supervisory authority over the site.
For a host facility, the controlling-employer role is the one to understand. If you have authority over the worksite, OSHA expects reasonable care in preventing and detecting violations, and what counts as reasonable depends on the facts. You are not expected to supervise the vendor's crew the way the vendor does. You are expected to share your hazard information, to act when you see an unsafe condition, and not to ignore a vendor you know is working unsafely.
In practice, that argues for a vendor with its own documented safety program and a supervisor on site who owns it. Without one, your EHS team can end up supervising a crew it does not employ.
How do you read a vendor's safety record?
Ask every bidder for three things:
- Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) for the last three years, and the industry benchmark they compare themselves to
- Experience Modification Rate (EMR) from their workers' comp carrier, where 1.0 is average and lower is more favorable
- OSHA 300A summaries for the same period
Then ask whose hours and whose injuries the rate includes. When some of the labor on an account comes from subcontractors or agencies, their injuries may be recorded on those companies' logs instead of the vendor's, so a vendor's TRIR may not describe the whole crew in your building. Understanding what the number covers lets you compare bidders fairly.
Outside validation is worth asking about too. McLemore holds the IBR Safety Excellence Award (Bronze), and at one safety-heavy chemical manufacturing complex we sit on the contractor safety council and attend its monthly meetings. Any bidder should be able to show you what outside validation or site-level safety participation stands behind its program.
Who is accountable on the night shift?
Much janitorial work happens after your own team has gone home. That makes the supervisor central to the arrangement, and the role is easy to leave vague in a contract.
Put it in writing: whether the supervisor is dedicated to your site or shared across several, how many hours they are physically on site, whether they are an employee of the vendor or of a subcontractor, and how you reach them after hours. We made the longer case for this in why on-site supervision changes everything.
What does an incident investigation need?
An incident investigation shows quickly who employs whom. Say a custodian slips on a freshly mopped floor near a loading dock and is taken to the clinic. Your EHS team will need:
- The injured person's employer, and that employer's incident report
- Their training records for the task and the area
- Drug and alcohol testing results, if your site or their employer requires them
- The supervisor's account, and whether the supervisor was on site
- A root cause and a corrective action that someone owns
When one company employs, trains and supervises the crew, those records sit in one place. With layered labor they may be spread across two or three companies, and it takes more coordination to assemble them and to agree on who owns the corrective action. Before you award the contract, ask each bidder to walk you through their last recordable incident at a comparable facility: who was notified, how fast, and what changed afterward.
What documents should you request?
Before award, and again at renewal, ask each vendor for:
- The legal employer of every person assigned to your site, and the percentage who are direct W-2 employees
- The background check standard in writing, with a sample report
- Site-specific training records for the assigned crew
- Certificates of insurance, including workers' comp, for every entity supplying labor, with the endorsements your risk team requires
- TRIR, EMR and OSHA 300A summaries for three years, with a note on whose hours and injuries they include
- The supervisor's name, employer, and committed on-site hours
- The incident notification and investigation procedure
- A commitment to notify you before any new labor source is used
Pay attention to how the answers come back. Complete, consistent records from one source are easy to evaluate. If the answers arrive from several companies or leave gaps, ask the vendor to explain its labor structure before you go further.
Where McLemore fits
W-2 employment on its own does not prove that screening, training or supervision are good. What it does is make one company answerable for all of them, which is why the questions above ask who employs, screens, trains, supervises and insures each worker.
Here is how that works at McLemore. We have run janitorial programs from Houston for more than 50 years, and every person we put in a client's building is a McLemore W-2 employee. We hire them, run their background checks, train them, supervise them, and cover them under our workers' comp. Each account has a dedicated supervisor. Our safety program has earned the IBR Safety Excellence Award (Bronze). You can see how that applies on a plant floor or in a distribution center on our manufacturing and distribution page. We would rather hand you the documentation list above than ask you to take any of it on faith.
For more on buying, budgeting, staffing and vendor management, sorted by role and by facility type, see the Facility Services Resource Center.
If you want to know how your current program would hold up against that list, we will walk your facility and go through it with you. Reach the sales team at sales@mbminc.com or (713) 528-7775.