Monday 12 May 2014

Campaign relaunches as UCL Justice for Cleaners











Having won the London Living Wage at UCL, and inspired by the vibrant campaigns at SOAS, Birkbeck and the University of London, we have relaunched our campaign with a similar energy and resolve as UCL Justice for Cleaners!


In 2006, students and staff began this campaign for the Living Wage at UCL. In 2010 UCL agreed to our demand, but it took the university until August 2013 to implement the wage for outsourced workers. Now, UCL pays all of its outsourced workers, including cleaning, catering and security staff, the London Living Wage. There is undoubtedly more to be done: UCL is not accredited by the Living Wage Foundation, and there seems little institutional will to do so, as the Provost recently refused to commit to the Living Wage for the future. However, under the moniker ‘Justice for Cleaners’, led by the workers and with the support of the trades unions and student union, we intend to broaden our campaign and our demands from a single issue to a wider platform of issues and grievances.

Thursday 3 April 2014

March Newsletter & April Organising Meeting

"Exciting news, plus updates from SOAS and 3Cosas"


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Details of our next organising meeting:


Monday April 7th
1-2pm
Foster Court Building 132, UCL

Facebook event here.

Join us on Monday lunchtime to prepare for an exciting campaigning month!
In the coming weeks the Campaign will be engaging in new initiatives and projects. Join us now to get involved from the beginning. If you can't make it but would like to lend a hand, email ucllivingwage [at] gmail.com

DIRECTIONS
Enter UCL from the south gates on Torrington Place. Proceed down Malet Place until the archway on the right. Enter Foster Court here; 123 is on the first floor.

Monday 3 March 2014

Support the SOAS Justice for Cleaners strike!



On 4 and 5 March, after an unprecedented 100% yes vote, the outsourced cleaners at SOAS will be taking strike action! The decision comes after a long running dispute between the workers and management, who refuse to grant them the same sick pay, holiday alloance and pensions as workers employed directly by the university.

Three ways to support:

  1. You can donate to the strike fund online - every little helps to cover the pay lost through strike action!
  2. Come down to the picket lines to support the workers on strike: we'll be there at 8.30am on 4 March (info here) and join the Festival of Resistance on the SOAS steps (info here).
  3. Follow the SOAS J4C Facebook page to stay up to date!
Outsourcing creates a two-tiered workforce in which outsourced workers become second-class members of the university. With their unanimous yes vote, the cleaners are sending a clear message to management that they will no longer be treated as inferior workers within an unequal system! You can read more about their struggle in student and national news media.

Thursday 27 February 2014

February Newsletter & March Organising Meeting

"Support the SOAS Justice for Cleaners strike! - plus, updates on KCL and Senate House"

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Details of our next organising meeting:
Monday March 3rd
1-2pm
Pearson Building (North Entrance) G23, UCL

Facebook event here.


Join us on Monday lunchtime to prepare for an exciting campaigning month!
In the coming weeks the Campaign will be engaging in new initiatives and projects. Join us now to get involved from the beginning. If you can't make it but would like to lend a hand, email ucllivingwage [at] gmail.com

DIRECTIONS
Enter UCL from the main Gower Street gates. Follow the Pearson Building round to the left and enter it in the North East corner of the Quad. G23 is on the ground floor

Monday 10 February 2014

January Newsletter & February Organising Meeting

"Support the 3Cosas strike; plus, Vice-Chancellors' pay skyrockets."

Click here to read our January newsletter.

Details of our next organising meeting:

Friday February 14th
1-2pm
Foster Court 112, UCL

Come along to find out more and get involved about the campaign to improve the rights of UCL's outsourced staff.

DIRECTIONS: enter UCL from the south gates on Torrington Place. The Foster Court building is on the right just before the tunnel; 112 is on the first floor.

FACEBOOK EVENT HERE.


Tuesday 26 November 2013

Support the 3Cosas strike!



The 3Cosas Campaign is one of the most powerful and exciting campaigns by outsourced workers in UK university history. The UCL Living Wage Campaign has and will continue to support the campaign. On Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 November, over 100 outsourced workers at the University of London will be going on strike. How can you support them?

  • Don't cross the picket lines. This means not entering Senate House on either strike day. This may seem a lot, but it's the most important thing: the point of the strike is to show how essential the labour these workers do is to the running of the university; if the university stops running, the strike is stronger. Senate House is closed on Wednesday 27 because of Foundation Day, so really this means going to a different library on Thursday 28.
  • Support the picket lines. Workers will be outside the gates of Senate House 6am to 1pm tomorrow and 6am to 3pm on Thursday. If you're around, go down and tell them you support the strike. The workers call themselves 'the invisibles' because of the way they are treated by employers; moral support from students is hugely appreciated.
  • Donate to the strike fund here. If you're part of an organisation, you could present this model motion to donate to the fund. Every bit will help!


Monday 21 October 2013

Why the Provost should read the UCL website



“Living wage tied to better mental health in London”, the UCL website proclaimed on 10 October. This conclusion, drawn from a recent study of the  effect of the London Living Wage (LLW), should come as no surprise to supporters of the £8.55 hourly wage, but recent comments by new UCL Provost Michael Arthur – whose welcome speech took place the day before – suggest that the senior management should listen more to what the experts at their own university are saying.

The findings of the study, that employees have better mental health “when employers set a higher minimum wage based on realistic living expenses,” were followed by supporting comments from top UCL academics. Mel Bartly, a professor of public health at UCL, told Reuters that "children of economically stressed parents often struggle at school and suffer long into their adulthood," and that "there is no net benefit to society as a whole of having groups who are in poverty." These unequivocal conclusions in favour of the living wage were, however, not sentiments echoed by Provost Arthur when he spoke of the LLW a day earlier.

On 9 October, UCL's new Provost Michael Arthur opened the Lunch Hour Lecture series with an introductory address, followed by a question and answer session. The UCL Living Wage Campaign tweeted to ask the Provost about the LLW and outsourcing; our question (which you can view in our previous article) wasn't asked, but the substance of it was covered by a similar question from a UCL staff member (beginning at 45:20, here):

Will Professor Arthur show a genuine commitment to the London Living Wage, and why does an organisation the size of UCL need to outsource?

Arthur's response was not without ambiguity. He said, with some uncertainty, that UCL has “committed” to the LLW, a decision that was “worth it” because UCL is an “ethical organisation.” But he said that the LLW had “probably cost us £2 million,” and that he wouldn't “sign on the dotted line” to maintain the LLW “in perpetuity,” speculating that there may be situations in which UCL management “would like some flexibility”. In a similar way, he said that while he hadn't outsourced a single sector at Leeds, and while he agreed with the questioner, he nonetheless argued that outsourcing provides “flexibility” and to undo it at UCL would be “difficult.”

Despite saying that the university would only move away from the LLW under “very, very extreme circumstances”, he attempted to flippantly dismiss the notion that management should adhere to the minimum pay required to stay out of poverty with the words: “I am not completely comfortable with a group of academics in Warwick setting the finances of UCL.” As well as suggesting ignorance about the LLW, which is set by the Greater London Authority, this (perhaps unintentionally) opened up another line of questioning: who does determine the finances of UCL, and why is poverty pay even seen as a option?

Rather than cheering on the campaign, which would show genuine dedication to decent standards of living for all Londoners, Arthur effectively offered no promise to continue to pay the LLW on campus. Nor did he mention the fact that it was only after considerable pressure from the UCL Living Wage Campaign that management offered its present “commitment”.

This failure to embrace the LLW should raise some very serious concerns about the future of the Living Wage among both UCL staff and LLW campaigners. It also exposes worrying flaws in Arthur’s rhetoric on workers’ rights. 

What kind of “ethical organisation” wants the flexibility to be able to stop paying its staff the Living Wage anyway? Why try to discredit the LLW as the set minimum requirement needed to stay above the poverty line in London? What is £2 million to a university which ran a surplus of £26 million in 2011-2012, and holds reserves of over £290 million? Is it not a price worth paying for decent standards of living for all of its workers? Or does flexibility, which means profit, trump ethics and the mental health of UCL’s staff? 

Despite UCL academics providing yet more evidence of the benefits of the LLW, Arthur seems to be unconvinced that a permanent management commitment to paying it is ethically valuable. The pressure is still on to fight for good pay and conditions on the UCL campus.