Cleaning up low pay is everyone’s job
February 27th 2008

One of the major issues facing contract cleaning companies in 2008, like many employers, will be how to operate in an uncertain economic environment, says Paul Davies, Lead Organiser, Unite.

For Unite’s membership of cleaners the challenge will be just as tough. Every employer and family will be hit by higher bills for fuel,and pressures on inflation and housing. Too many cleaners still earn the national minimum wage of £5.52 per hour,and in London particularly,have to take two or even three jobs just to survive. The cleaners who don’t have sick pay or a pension suffer even greater insecurity,not knowing how they can provide for themselves and their families if they become ill or when they retire.

Paying cleaners a decent wage and providing the jobs with security and respect is not just a moral obligation, it is an imperative for employers and government.

Low wages and insecurity affect the wider economy,not just those who are struggling at the sharp end.Low wages hit consumer spending,and impact on the support the state provides.Paying decent wages is certainly the responsibility of the business community and employers, but government moving to raise the national minimum wage to a living wage is vital if we are to lift people out of poverty.

Unite’s campaign to organise cleaners in the City of London, Canary Wharf, London Underground and the Houses of Parliament has given low-paid cleaners a public profile they never had before.

Many of our members spoke of how they felt invisible; how they came and went in the night; and how they weren’t treated with respect.

As a result of the high-profile actions by cleaners that have hit the headlines, ‘Justice for Cleaners’ has become a rallying cry that many have become familiar with. But the union has always known that delivering justice means clients paying a fair price for their contracts. That is why our public campaigns have always targeted the clients first and foremost, and why the clients have ultimately been crucial in winning justice for cleaners.

Big banks,law firms and insurance brokers that boast about their profits and bonuses cannot then expect to gain a good public image when the cleaners who clean their buildings are denied basic benefits like sick pay,proper holidays,a pension and a living wage. Unite’s campaign has meant many hundreds of the cleaners we now represent have seen their wages increase from the minimum to a fair living wage, in London currently set at £7.20 per hour. As we look to the future,cleaning contracts will have to be won on the basis of efficiency and quality of service delivery, not on low wages or poor conditions. Unite has and will continue to play its role in ensuring that clients get the message that they need to pay a fair price if they want cleaners not to be driven into poverty.

Unite

Unite the union is the new name for the merged trade unions previously known as the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T&G) and Amicus. The new union is Britain’s biggest, uniting nearly two million workers into one union, from finance workers to cleaners.

The challenge for unions has never been greater: while employment has risen in the past decade, union membership has declined as more work has been created in non-unionised sectors, and jobs have been lost in typically well-unionised industries like manufacturing.

Unite is determined to become part of the lives of the many millions of workers in the UK currently not in any union at all. The organising campaigns that the T&G has been running in cleaning, for example, show that workers who are not traditionally union members can be engaged in a union when it organises them around their key workplace issues.

2008 is set to be an exciting year for Unite as it formally completes merger in November, utilising its combined resources to reach out to the unorganised in a way that no union has done before.