cleaners

More than 120 members of the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will walk out on 25th August. The workers want a higher basic wage than the £6.37 per hour which the staff, who work for contractor OCS, receive.

The union is gathering evidence that cleaners have been bullied, harassed and threatened with the sack and with illegal punitive deductions from their wages if they take strike action.

The workers, members of local 1251 of the public service union have been striking since January 10th; pay negotiations broke down at the end of November and no new negiotiations were scheduled.

The mainly Polish workers employed by cleaning company Glenn Management to clean offices on the Moulton Park industrial estate, Northampton, had not been paid properly for around four months. However after only one day's strike action they were paid the money that they were owed.

RMT today revealed that Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has agreed that the London Living Wage of £7.20 an hour will become the minimum for some 900 cleaners on former Metronet contracts from the moment TfL take charge of them.

For some cleaners paid only the minimum legal wage of £5.85 it will mean an increase of at least £1.35 an hour - well over 20%.

The action involved striking for 55 minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day in a struggle for better wages and conditions.

After a month of weekly one-day strikes the cleaners, employed by contractor TSI, at the Gare d'Austerlitz have returned to work.

Staff at Neath Port Talbot Hospital, contracted by OCS Ltd, say they have been told their hours are to be cut. Officials from trade union Unison said the 140 staff affected are angry and added an independent report recommended hours should in fact be increased. But a spokesperson for OCS denied there had been a cut in working hours.

Houston janitors ended a month long strike today against the city's five major cleaning companies after reaching a tentative agreement that will guarantee higher wages, more work hours and medical benefits.

Taken from Houston Justice for Janitors