[sas-announce] UK campus living-wage campaign victory

[Josh Robinson]

Cleaners will get a pay rise as sweat-free campus campaigners at Queen 
Mary College in east London win a victory ...

Mira Katbamna, Tuesday April 11, 2006. The Guardian

They are an essential part of every university. They start work when 
everyone else leaves, and finish before most others get there in the 
morning. They are poorly paid, receive no holiday or sick pay and often 
take on two or three jobs to make ends meet. Contracted cleaners, security 
guards and caterers are academia's dirty secret. But last Thursday, Queen 
Mary, part of the University of London, voted to abolish "poverty pay" on 
campus.

The college council committed itself to making Queen Mary the first 
"living wage campus" in the UK. This means no one will be paid less than a 
living wage (currently set at £6.70 an hour), or receive fewer than 28 
days' holiday and 10 days' sick pay. Crucially, the change includes all 
staff on campus, not just those directly employed by the university. Queen 
Mary's cleaning staff are going to get a rise.

For Christine Martin, cleaning supervisor at Queen Mary for 12 years, the 
living wage will make a huge difference. Martin is employed by the 
university's cleaning contractors, KGB, and receives £5.20 an hour - the 
£5.05 minimum wage plus a pitiful 15 pence an hour as supervisor. "It is 
difficult to survive in London on this kind of money. Sometimes you think 
you might as well not work for what you earn," she says. "I do a second 
job and have to claim housing benefit just to make ends meet, so the 
living wage really has given me something to look forward to."

Change has been pushed through by London Citizens, an umbrella group that 
unites faith groups, unions, academics and anyone else from the community 
who wants to join. Queen Mary was lobbied by a pressure group that 
included almost all the organisations on its doorstep: Guardian Angels 
Roman Catholic Church, the East London Mosque, the London Buddhist Centre, 
Unison, the AUT, Queen Mary's own geography department, students and the 
cleaners themselves.

London Citizens has form. It was the group that persuaded HSBC to adopt 
the living wage at its Canary Wharf offices, and got Ken Livingstone to 
agree to ethical economic guarantees (including the living wage) for the 
Olympics. But as Matthew Bolton, project manager for the living wage 
campaign, explains, London Citizens sees its role as community organisers, 
not campaigners. "Of course, the campaigns are important, and we judge 
ourselves against their success, but most of all we work to build a 
permanent, diverse alliance," he says. "With us, you can't just say 'oh 
well, they would say that because they are Muslim, or pensioners, or 
students, or trade unions' - because we are all of those groups."

The battle has been hard won. Bolton's first letter to Professor Adrian 
Smith, principal of Queen Mary, requesting a meeting, was refused on the 
basis that pay and conditions were commercially confidential and not up 
for discussion with third parties. After repeated requests and a rally 
attended by 150 cleaners, staff and students, Bolton eventually got his 
meeting, but was told that while the living wage agenda was "morally 
irresistible", it was also "financially irresponsible".

The breakthrough came when the group was allowed to present in person and 
with a video letter to the college's finance committee. Convinced, the 
committee put forward the proposal passed last week. "The video letter was 
a very efficient way of saying we are lots of people, from all areas of 
the community, and we are prepared to run actions to raise the profile of 
this issue," Bolton explains. "Queen Mary prides itself on being a 
university of and for this community, so we pointed out the hypocrisy. But 
we also dangled a few carrots, pointing out that the university would 
become a fair trade employer, and that increased motivation and commitment 
from cleaning staff could actually save them money."

In fact, the most difficult part of the campaign was getting the cleaners 
on board. Mostly unfamiliar with unions, workers were scared they would be 
sacked or blacklisted. One cleaner, who didn't want to be identified, says 
he supported the campaign, but was worried about losing his job. "I 
haven't been able to participate in public, but I have given them as much 
information in secret as I can," he says. "I'm not ready to leave this 
job, so I have to be careful."

Despite the fears, Bolton managed to find individuals who could lead the 
campaign. June Watson, 52, who came to the UK from Jamaica in 1989, was 
one. "I have worked at Queen Mary for 13 years, so when the campaign 
started, I knew it had to be a good thing," she says. "A lot of people - 
most, actually - were scared. Sometimes I was the only person to turn up 
to meetings. But I had to stand up because there were people who couldn't 
take the risk."

Another important factor in the success of the campaign was the 
longstanding relationship between London Citizens and the Queen Mary 
geography department. Graduate student Lina Jamoul was involved with the 
HSBC campaign in Canary Wharf and says it was only a matter of time before 
they brought the campaign on to campus. "Most students don't think about 
the cleaners - they rarely see them - but the cause was so obviously just 
that it wasn't hard to gather support," she says. "We made the case that 
students want to know that tuition fees are being spent in an ethical way, 
but the tipping point for the student body came when we rallied. None of 
the cleaners felt confident to speak without reprisals, and we felt that 
just wasn't right on a university level."

Professor Jane Wills, whose geography department joined London Citizens in 
2001, conducted much of the research on poverty pay that was used to build 
the cleaners' case. "Virtually every university in the UK outsources 
cleaning, security and catering," she says, "so the college council has 
been exceptional in recognising the injustice under their noses and acting 
upon it." Politics lecturer and AUT committee member Catherine Needham 
agrees. "This is one of the most exciting things I've been involved in, 
not least because London Citizens actually get results."

Despite the obvious delight of everyone involved, the college authorities 
were unavailable for comment, instead issuing a statement saying they had 
committed the college "to the principal of socially responsible 
contracting" and that they would seek to implement the policy "as soon as 
is feasible, given our current commercial commitments".

It is a statement that highlights the difficulties of making the living 
wage a reality - the college will now have to negotiate with all 
contractors on campus. However, according to David Weddell, divisional 
director at KGB, contractors fully support the living wage. "I believe 
that everyone should have the opportunity and the right to a decent wage 
for what they do," he says, "and we are working with all our clients to 
implement the living wage wherever possible."

Bolton remains sceptical, but says that getting the agreement in place is 
what matters. "On May 1, we will be presenting Queen Mary with an award 
recognising it as the first living-wage campus. It has taken them less 
than a year to change their policy. It's a real achievement."