United Workers is calling for NSW school cleaners to be directly employed by the state government following the release of a new survey by the union that reported high injury rates among cleaners amid contractors cutting back hours.

According to United Workers’ More Tasks Than Time report, which surveyed almost 300 school cleaners, workers have reported a host of injuries at schools including fractured kneecap from falling downstairs, broken wrist, broken fingers, and fractured ankle.

Survey respondents said they need to perform more than 600 tasks a day under the terms of the NSW Government’s privatised cleaning contracts, which reportedly calculates to less than 45 seconds for each task.

The survey, conducted in late July and August, found about half of respondents said contractors had cut back cleaning hours in the last five years.

Thirty-seven per cent said they had been injured at work in the last five years, while 34 per cent said they had experienced bullying, harassment, or discrimination at work in the last five years.

The survey also found that 75 per cent said workloads had become worse in the last five years; a further 22 per cent said workloads were “the same as always”. Only 3 per cent said workloads had become better.

More than half of school cleaners also said they had trouble receiving the correct pay.

United Workers Union Property Services co-ordinator Linda Revill said NSW school cleaners are “trapped in a privatised system with impossible workloads”.

“The survey shows the duty to provide a safe workplace has been abandoned by contractors as they cut back cleaning hours at schools and they give cleaners even more towering workloads,” Revill said.

“It’s high time the failed privatisation is ended, and NSW school cleaners are employed directly by the NSW Government.”

The figure of more than 600 tasks is based on cleaners’ reports of the separate areas they are expected to clean daily, with daily per-area tasks calculated using the NSW Government contract specifications outlined in this document.

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