Cleaners employed by a company to clean at Streatham and Clapham High School in South London have voted to strike over pay, the MyLondon website reports.
The cleaners are demanding the same conditions as cleaning staff employed directly by the independent girls’ school, including equal sick pay, pensions and entitlement to annual leave.
The cleaners, who are paid between £11.95 and £12.05 per hour, also want a pay rise of 13.4 per cent, which would amount to a rise of around £1.60 or £1.61 per hour.
The workers are also demanding the company that employs them, Zing Clean Ltd, recognise their union United Voices of the World [UVW] for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The cleaners at Streatham and Clapham High School are staff at one of a number of workplaces across the capital that have voted to stage simultaneous walk-outs. Workers at an Amazon Warehouse, the London School of Economics and La Retraite Roman Catholics Girls’ School in South London are among the others striking.
The dates of the coordinated strike action will be announced this week (W/C May 29).
Magaly Quesada Herrera, a UVW member and cleaner at La Retraite, said: “As a general rule the vast majority of cleaners get up between 4am and 5am. We have to work at least 10 hours a day to barely make ends and tend to work several jobs of 1-2 hours. The jobs are in different places which means we are on the streets for approximately 12 to 14 hours a day, eating many times in buses, far from our families and with hardly any rest.”