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Cllr Adrian Oliver |
Calls to review pay and conditions for council cleaners
COUNCIL cleaners are suffering unfair working conditions at the hands of private contractors, according to campaigners who are calling for contracts to be reviewed.
Mitie, one of the UK’s largest cleaning contractors, are paid in excess of £2.5 million a year to provide Camden with clean schools, libraries, leisure centres, day centres and Town Hall offices.
But workers have complained of health and safety-related accidents, poor rates of pay, lack of sick pay and being sacked without notice.
Green councillor Adrian Oliver is to table a motion at the next full council meeting, calling for better health and safety training, English language lessons and an increased wage for the estimated 120 cleaners employed by Mitie under the deal with the council.
Cllr Oliver said: “We want Camden to be a model employer. There’s a question of lack of transparency in commercial contracts. We should be making some call for a change of procedure.”
The service was first outsourced in 2001, despite cleaners being given assurances that it would stay in-house, said Unison representative George Binette.
Longer-serving cleaners are paid £6.50 an hour but new recruits get just £5.52 per hour.
Former Green mayoral candidate and Patron of the Fair Pay Network coalition, Sian Berry – who campaigns for a £7.20 minimum wage – said: “While a pay rise of £1.70 might seem like a lot to the council, it’s an awful lot to the employee. There’s plenty of ways of saving money other than exploiting people.”
Only about 30 cleaners are Unison members, which is not sufficient for union recognition.
Mr Binette can take up individual cases but is unable to negotiate with Mitie over pay and conditions for staff generally to secure English language training. Street-cleaners get such training in Westminster.
Mr Binette said: “Part of the challenge as a trade union is communicating with people who will not feel confident exercising their rights because of their status as migrants. I doubt very much if they’re going to pick up on health and safety training if they don’t have command of English.”
Ms Berry added: “These demands are not coming from the workforce as yet. Unless we can get the majority of the workforce calling for the service to be run by the public sector it’s going to be a real uphill struggle.”
The council meets regularly with Mitie and trade unions, said a council spokeswoman, and that complaints raised are taken seriously. “Workers have not brought the list of concerns to our attention in these meetings,” the spokeswoman added. “The staff employed on this work are not employees of Camden Council and responsibility for them lies with Mitie.”
Mitie did not respond to questions from the New Journal. |
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