8 March 2022
RMT Press Office:
Hundreds of key rail cleaning staff to take 48-hour strike action across London and South East this weekend.
RMT members working for cleaning contractor Churchill across London and the South East, will take 2 days strike action from Saturday March 12 across trains and stations run by major railways companies.
This will be the second bout of strike action in the campaign, and it will affect Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern, Southeastern, Eurostar and HS1 services.
Cleaners in London currently earn the National Minimum Wage of £8.91 per hour and are demanding to be paid £15 per hour, the right to company sick pay, and to be made direct employees of the railway.
In 2020 cleaning contractor Churchill made £39m profit yet has refused to raise cleaners wages to £15 an hour.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said:
"Churchill have shown scant regard for their staff and have failed to pay them properly despite ballooning profits.
"These workers performed heroics during the pandemic, risking their health and safety to keep London moving.
"But Churchill have so far not offered anything meaningful for our members to consider.
"RMT will not rest until we achieve pay justice and ensure that these greedy multimillion pound contractors are stripped of their ability to exploit workers on our railways."
Note for Editors:
- Profits from 2020 are the most recent available. Click here for more information.
- As RMT showed recently, Workers on the National Minimum Wage and the Real Living Wage are more than £1,000 worse off now than 12 months ago as a result of soaring inflation, according to new research published by the RMT today. As RPI inflation reached 7.5% in December 2021 it meant that a worker on the National Minimum Wage would need £1,252 more a year to prevent a real terms pay cut while a worker on the Real Living Wage would need £1,395 more: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/soaring-inflation-biting-into-low-paid-workers-wages/
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Tagged with: Cleaners, Churchill Group, Strike, Pay Justice, Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern, Southeastern, Eurostar, HS1
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