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17/12/07 The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern was the setting for a protest calling for the gallery to pay its cleaners and catering staff the London Living Wage :
Posing as a diverse range of ordinary art fans, around 100 of us waited for our signal (a lone singer and then lined up each side of the crack to link hands and solemnly sing together a range of Christmas Carols. After these songs, we filed out of the huge entrance doors – still singing – to join the more traditional union picket and brass band outside to continue performing seasonal songs with slightly doctored lyrics , including ‘we wish you a merry workforce’ (my favourite).
The effect of all this was so moving that we drew a large audience of spectators inside the gallery and the action inside was described on air as ‘incredibly impressive’ by the BBC reporter sent to cover it. - New Statesman
6/11/07 Church Action on Poverty today called on all employers to pay a “living wage” of at least £7 an hour and attacked excess and hypocrisy in boardroom pay rises.
Niall Cooper, CAP national co-ordinator, said the past few years had seen huge increases in boardroom pay, fuelling the growing gap between rich and poor. He said: “In 2000, company chief executives earned 62 times the pay of their average employees - now they pay themselves 104 times more. This cannot be right in a civilised society. We are the fourth wealthiest nation on the planet - it is time we started to share the benefits.” - Scotsman
24/10/07 Staff from Food Partners, a factory which provides sandwiches to nearby Heathrow, downed tools and took to the street claiming bosses made them work in icy conditions without the proper insulating body warmers while refusing to pay them a ‘living’ wage. Workers were mobilised into action on Wednesday by The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO) who took a delegation into the factory to demand change. - Slough Observer
18/10/07 Yesterday some LSE students attended a graduate recruitment presentation at Citigroups European headquarters on the Wharf. They handed out flyers to potential bankers urging them to consider the bank’s treatment of its support staff when deciding which company to work for. Citibank, the largest bank in the world, is refusing to pay the Living Wage to its cleaning staff, and refusing to meet with London Citizens or the T&G to discuss the issue. - London Citizens
1/9/07 London needs a higher minimum wage so that pay for the lowest earners keeps pace with the average worker in the capital, according to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). The report shows that the gap between the lowest paid workers and average wages in the capital is wider than anywhere else in the country.
ippr argues that the Government should recognise the exceptional circumstances in London with a specific minimum wage rate set at around £6.50 an hour for the capital but should reject a full scale regionalisation of the National Minimum Wage. - ippr
15/8/07 Thousands of families with disabled children are living in poverty or suffering financial hardship. Many struggle with the extra costs of raising disabled children and face barriers to working, the Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) campaign said. It found that more than one in five families with disabled children could not afford to feed their family properly and that such families were 50% more likely to be in debt than others. More than nine in 10 (93%) families reported some form of financial difficulty, with only 6% saying they were comfortably off. Families caring for disabled children are also 50% less likely to be able to afford new clothes or school outings when compared to other families. - Mail on Sunday
2/8/07 French multinational company Sodexho has been forced to stop paying poverty wages to their canteen staff at Haggerston School. From September the canteen staff will be paid the London living wage and over the next year, their wages will increase to £9 an hour. The victory was achieved after a very successful one-day strike in June. On the day of the strike the catering workers set up a picket line and 35 teachers and 2 technicians refused to cross the picket line. Sodexho attempted to smash the strike by bringing in managers to run the kitchens. However, due to the support of the teachers, most pupils had to be sent home. The school is tied into a PFI contract with Sodexho who built a canteen in return for a long-term contract. - Hackney Independent
July 07 A major London Housing Trust has agreed to pay its lowest paid staff £7.20 per hour. Unite made the pay claim of £7.20 to Peabody Housing Trust in line with the policy of London Mayor, Ken Livingstone and the London Living wage campaign’s call for a higher pay rate for Londoners. Unite want all London employers to pay a living wage. - Unite
24/7/07 Today the new Coalition Fighting Unfair Pay (COFUP) is launched in the House of Commons. COFUP is the initiative of the Socialist Youth Network. Its two main aims are:1) To campaign for all Labour councils to include a Living Wage without exemptions in their procurement contracts;2) To make a Living Wage for all workers the policy of the Labour party. - COFUP19/7/07 The CWU has announced an escalation of its action against Royal Mail. Although postal workers will individually take 2 days of strike action in the next two weeks, the strikes announced mean that there will be two weeks of continuous disruption to mail services. A key plank in the CWU’s pay strategy is to secure a decent living wage for all posties. - CWU
22/6/07 Yesterday a delegation of cleaners handed in a petition to BBC head Mark Thompson, signed by 700 cleaning staff and BBC employees, including the likes of Moira Stuart, Gary Lineker and the entire Weather Room.
The petition is a response to the cleaning contractor OCS’s decision to sack nearly a dozen cleaners because they are over the retirement age.
The cleaners also demand that the BBC require OCS to pay a Living Wage of £7.20 per hour, as opposed to the minimum they currently receive, along with other basic benefits such as sick pay and 28 days holiday. - Latin American Workers Association (by email)
21/6/07 Contract cleaners working in London’s fire stations will see their hourly wage increase to £7.20 after a vote on the issue. The city’s Fire and Emergency Planning Authority agreed by nine votes to eight in favour of the minimum hourly rate. - BBC
20/6/07 Barclays today reacted to trade-union pressure and bumped up the pay of 1,000 cleaners and other ancillary staff to £7.50 an hour. Many of them work in the investment banking and fund management offices, where most staff earn well over £100,000 a year.
Until now, cleaners at the Canary Wharf headquarters have been paid £6.40 an hour while those at Barclays Wealth Management got £6.14. Now 1,000 cleaning, mailroom, gym and catering staff in 370 locations across the capital will see their wages lifted to £7.50 an hour. - No Sweat
13/6/07 The attempt to block a decent level of pay for London’s fire station cleaners which will come to a head at next week’s full fire authority meeting was taken to Parliament today as the Prime Minister stepped in to back the living wage. Raising the matter with Tony Blair during Prime Minister’s Questions today, Dawn Butler MP described as ‘indefensible’ the votes of Conservatives against paying fire station cleaners a minimum of £7.20 an hour. Their vote at the finance committee of the fire authority led to deadlock and now means the full fire authority will decide the issue on 21st June.
Responding, Prime Minister Tony Blair said: ‘It is excellent that London is focused on paying the Living Wage to the cleaners. I very hope much hope if right honourable gentleman [the Leader of the Opposition] can exert a bit of control over his party they can change their decision.’ - GLA
5/6/07 Deputy Labour leadership candidate Jon Cruddas today called for a new “living wage” and tougher protection for exploited workers as he launched his manifesto for the contest. - Scotsman
1/6/07 Brixton Ritzy cinema members are striking today for a second time in a dispute over low pay. The dispute hangs on Ritzy owners City Screen’s pay offer to increase wages from the National Minimum Wage of £5.35 to £5.41.
The first day of industrial action took place last Saturday 26 May to coincide with the launch of Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. Staff dressed up as swash-buckling pirates, brandishing signs such as “Charge London rates, pay London rates”, “Pay us a living wage! (or at least the poverty line)” and “A living wage for Ritzy staff”. - Bectu
23/5/07 Barclays will be named the worst payer of cleaners out of the big banks at Canary Wharf as crowds of cleaners and London Citizens faith communities will rally to demand the London living wage be paid to the cleaners by the multinational banks and law firms that occupy the Wharf.
Earlier this month the Mayor of London announced that the London living wage has risen to £7.20ph, so Canary Wharf cleaners, backed by London Citizens and their union, Unite (T&G section) will today launch their claim for what experts believe the minimum hourly rate is that anyone can afford to live on in London. - Unite (T&G)
8/5/07 Britain’s largest-ever rally in support of illegal immigrants has called for an amnesty for an estimated 500,000 South Asians, Africans and eastern Europeans living here as so-called “shadow people”. - Times of India
3/5/07 The GMB is holding a strike ballot for cleaners in Lambeth Council. Cleaners working on OCS employment contracts in Lambeth Town Hall get 12 days holiday per year plus Bank Holidays and cleaners who transferred from Lambeth Council get 26 days plus Bank Holidays. Cleaners on OCS contracts are not entitled to any occupational sick pay. All the Cleaners are on the minimum wage and GMB has written to OCS with a pay proposal for a minimum £7 per hour living wage. - GMB
30/4/07 Ethnic minorities suffer from economic “apartheid” in Britain, race watchdogs have claimed after a study found that two-thirds of Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are living in poverty.
The study, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, reveals that ethnic minorities suffer twice the level of poverty of white Britons, as discrimination and disadvantage blight their life chances. - Guardian
April 2007 One in seven of London’s full time employees and nearly half of its part-time workers are earning a wage that keeps them below the poverty line. Figures show that hundreds of thousands of people earn less than this year’s Living Wage - the official amount needed to live free from poverty in London. - GLA
4/4/07 Rail and Tube cleaners have staged a demonstration outside City Hall calling for a “living wage” of £7.20 an hour. - BBC
3/4/07 Plaid Cymru has announced plans for a “national living wage” if it wins power in the Welsh assembly election in May. Launching Plaid’s manifesto, leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said it would be made a condition of the assembly government’s contract with other public bodies. - BBC
3/4/07 Commenting on the announcement of a new Living Wage for London at £7.20, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Economic Development on the London Assembly, Dee Doocey, said:
“The Mayor is right that low-paid Londoners should earn a Living Wage, but this announcement is just hot air unless he can make it happen for the biggest employment project about to hit the capital.
‘The Mayor and Seb Coe signed an ‘Ethical contract’ with London Citizens before winning the Olympics, promising a Living Wage for everyone involved. Yet to date, no Living Wage has been included in the contracts allocated and Seb Coe told the London Assembly that “any of the issues about a living wage is a consideration, not a condition”. This is of great concern because LOCOG will be letting contracts for all the traditionally low-paid jobs such as catering and cleaning.
‘It is also ironic that a matter of weeks after happily taking a £9m grant from the London Development Agency to built a new extension, Tate Modern cannot be bothered to ensure that cleaning and catering staff working in its galleries are paid a Living Wage.’ - LibDem
2/4/07 Mayor of London Ken Livingstone today announced a new Living Wage for London at £7.20 following publication of the Living Wage Unit’s third annual report. - GLA
March 2007 More than 300 cleaning staff working at the London School of Economics will see their wages increased from the NMW to the London Living Wage level over two years as a direct result of the Living Wage campaign - Unison
However security staff employed by private firms and working at the LSE continue to be paid below the Living Wage. Having committed to working with London Citizens to implement the living wage, it is likely that the LSE will address this. - Beaver
13/2/07 Nearly half of the cleaners who work in the City of London are now covered by union agreements with the Transport and General Workers’ Union, as a result of an intensive organising campaign by cleaners in the run up to Christmas 2006 - TGWU
15/1/07 Angry City of London cleaners have brought fresh spirit to fighting back in their campaign for workplace justice. Global money machine Goldman Sachs felt the wrath of the cleaners when the workers decided to occupy the plush foyer of the merchant bank’s London headquarters. - TGWU
