London Living Wage
NJC pay fair and appropriate rates of pay and is an advocate of the London Citizens & UNITE Living Wage Campaign. London Citizens are a pressure group devoted to "A fair day's pay for a hard day's work". They describe the London Living Wage as "the level of pay and conditions that enables a full-time worker to make ends meet for themselves and their family". Over 50% of cleaners in London are members of the trade union UNITE formed from the merger of Amicus and the TGWU.
London Citizens state that full-time cleaners in London should be at least:
- Paid a Living Wage (£7.85/hour).
- Eligible for 10 days full sick pay.
- Eligible for 28 days paid holiday (including bank holidays).
- Given access to a recognised trade union.
London is an expensive city. The principle London Weighting, that wages should reflect these higher costs, is long accepted. The statutory minimum wage does not take this regional variation into account. According to London Citizens, due to the high costs of living in the capital, the national minimum wage keeps 400,000 Londoners below the poverty line.
The combined London Citizens and UNITE campaign has brought increased wages to cleaners at the London offices of HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, RBS, KPMG, PWC and Lovells. With this growing number of ‘victories’, they are now pursuing Living Wage Zones in Canary Wharf and the City of London to "make sure that no-one cleaning in that area has to suffer poverty wages".
Barclays Employee Relations Director Dominic Johnson said the company "believe that people who work for our contractors, whether cleaners, security staff or in other roles, all contribute to our customers' experience of Barclays. Fair pay means motivated staff who stay working at Barclays longer. Improving people's standard of living makes business sense."
