Cleaning Exellence

Submission to the judges of the 2021 Cleaning Excellence Awards on behalf of the RMT Union “This has probably one of the most difficult years in my employment. Yet I think how the company has treated us as a work force has been disgraceful”.

This is a submission to the judges of the Cleaning Excellence Awards on behalf of the RMT union, which represents cleaners in the transport industry. We represent cleaners employed by Churchill working on contracts at Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern, Southeastern, Eurostar and High Speed 1.

We wish the judges to have and take into consideration the following information in making their deliberations.

Cleaners working for Churchill have, like cleaners across the country, worked heroically, at personal risk to themselves throughout the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, cleaning was neglected and overlooked, often seen as ‘non-core’ to operations. How wrong that view has proven.

Unfortunately, many companies in the cleaning industry have colluded in that view and have viewed cleaning staff as a cost to be minimised. Churchill, who are up for four awards in this event, are one of those companies.

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Churchill pay only the Minimum Wage on their Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern (TSGN) contracts.

Churchill do not pay company sick pay to their cleaners on TSGN, Southeastern, HS1 or Eurostar; Churchill do not give the same travel facilities to their staff that other rail staff have access to; Churchill try to minimise their staff costs by holding down the number of cleaning staff and have indicated that they intend to cut staff jobs on their Southeastern Rail operations.

A recent survey of cleaners working for Churchill on its rail contracts in the South and Southeast revealed some shocking results.

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61% reported that they sometimes or regularly struggle to get by 69% reported that they have gone into work while sick because they couldn’t afford not to work 35% were not confident they have the right equipment to do the job properly 42% reported that the number of cleaners employed had fallen in the last three years 61% said they were not confident they had enough people to do their job properly

Here are some of the things that Churchill cleaners told us: • • • • • •

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“The company does not encourage and does not appreciate their cleaning workers, they treat us like anything, there’s a lot of discrimination and inequality ... The number of workers is always low to do the job well..”

“Overworked , under paid, under-valued and completely stress ridden is how I feel” “We should have more staff on day shift as we are doing extra work now” “Most of the times we're not appreciated about the effort we do to carry on in this difficult times” “There’s too much expected of staff with low pay and no sick pay. We need more training opportunities and should be treated fairly. Staff are struggling to take annual leave.. we need staff to increase to help with workloads”.

“Churchill is one of the worst companies ever. I can see so many times that they don’t care about the staff, only about their money. They don’t even want to provide the PPE, they are trying to do whatever they can to cut the expenses. The contracted hours are bad”.

“I have worked for Churchill for years and I have always had problems. Payslips have always been an issue. Management act like bullies towards employees and when employees put a grievance in against management it gets brushed to the side as a miscommunication. They don’t care for us at all, we are simply a number to a statistic to them.”

Through their union, these cleaners have submitted pay claims that aim to tackle some of the worst problems on Churchill’s contracts. There’s no doubt that Churchill can afford this claim, as they paid themselves a £3.8 million dividend in 2020. RMT calculates that this dividend alone would fund a pay rise of between 11 and 30% for more than 1200 rail cleaners. But so far, Churchill have not made an acceptable offer to resolve the issues.

These cleaners are being driven toward taking strike action.

To be clear, we are not asking that Churchill are excluded from the awards. The heroic operatives who have worked throughout the pandemic at risk to themselves deserve recognition. But we are sure you would agree that recognition should extend beyond awarding a trophy to company executives. It must involve treating cleaners fairly and remedying the problems we have highlighted. We would ask that the judges include in any decision they make, a published recommendation to Churchill that they negotiate with the union to settle the claims that have been lodged.

We look forward to your response.