A professional who tends one or more machines that wash commercial, industrial, or household articles, such as garments, blankets, curtains, draperies, fine linens, and rags. Respnsibilities include:

• Loads, or directs workers engaged in loading, machine with articles requiring identical treatment.
• Starts machine and turns valves to admit specified amounts of soap, detergent, water, bluing, and bleach.
• Adds starch to loads of such articles as curtains or linens, when bell signal indicates that washing cycle is completed.
• Removes, or directs workers in removing, articles from washer and into handtrucks or extractors.
• May wash delicate fabrics by hand.
• May mix solutions, such as bleach, bluing, or starch, and apply them to articles before or after washing to remove color or improve appearance.
• May spot-clean articles, before washing, to remove heavy stains.
• May sterilize items.
• May hang curtains, draperies, or blankets on stretch-frames to dry.
• May brush blankets, or feed blankets into carding machine, to raise and fluff nap.
• May pull trousers over heated metal forms to dry and stretch legs.
• May load and remove articles from extractor or drier by hand or hoist, using metal basket or cord mesh bag.
• May tend semiautomatic or computer-controlled washing machines that automatically select water levels, temperature, cleaning additives, and wash cycle according to type of articles to be laundered.
• May tend machines that dry articles.
• When washing contaminated laundry from hospital isolation wards, may be designated Isolation-Washer.
• May be designated according to type of articles washed as Flatwork Washer; Overall Washer; Rag Washer; Washer, Blanket.