Where the Women Wait, an Unwritten Code Is Revised

Where the Women Wait, an Unwritten Code Is Revised

By EWA KERN-JEDRYCHOWSKA

Marcin Zurawicz Women, many of them Hispanic or Polish, waiting for work cleaning houses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

For years, every morning, the sight has been the same at Marcy and Division Avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: a crowd of women gathered on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass amid the din of traffic. They are day laborers looking not for construction work, but for work cleaning houses of Hasidic residents.

There were originally maybe 40 or 50. And like many traditions that grow up out of necessity around New York City, this cleaning woman shape-up had certain unwritten codes, accepted patterns that all the women acknowledged, and abided by. Read more…