Pay Up now – cleaners not being paid London Living Wage

Barnet UNISON had tried unsuccessfully to convince Labour controlled Barnet Council to bring back the cleaning service in-house earlier this year. If they have had brought Cleaning back in-house which is a service which is predominantly carried out by black female Barnet UNISON members they would have made a powerful statement to a workforce that is often overlooked when it comes to consideration for insourcing.

Last week Barnet UNISON spoke to some of our cleaners to check that they are receiving the correct London Living Wage increase of £13.15.

Barnet UNISON discovered that they were NOT being paid the correct rate and we have written to Norse Cleaning and Barnet Council to ask that they are paid the correct rate, and they receive their backdated payments.

We have been given an assurance that the error will be rectified. We will wait to see our members payslips later this month.

Earlier this year our cleaners were informed there were changes to their annual leave they came to Barnet UNISON to explain. The letter was not well written and difficult to understand but we finally sorted it out and made sure that none of our members were going to lose their annual leave because of the changes.

Barnet UNISON takes its responsibilities seriously and will never shirk having difficult conversations with employers it’s what we should do.

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