9 November 2022
RMT Press Office:
Cleaning contractors operating on the transport network are raking in millions of pounds worth of profit while paying their workers poverty wages, an RMT investigation has found.
RMT looked at 7 cleaning companies who operate in rail and found that they made bigger profits in 2021 than in 2019, the year before pandemic.
On aggregate their profits for the year more than doubled on those from 2019.
Many of the companies identified by the union, including Churchill, Mitie and Atalian Servest, are contractors that are being balloted for national strike action of RMT cleaners.
The union’s demands include a £15 an hour wage, company sick pay and paid holidays for cleaners who were rightly hailed as heroes during the Covid pandemic.
RMT also found that 5 out of 7 companies paid dividends during the two pandemic years. And these were three times the size of payments in 2019.
While workers have suffered pay freezes and real terms cuts, company fat cats have been laughing all the way to the bank with inflation busting pay rises.
These include Phil Bentley Mitie CEO going from being paid £2,841,623 in 2020 to 3,869,476 in 2021 - an increase of 36%.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "These figures are an indictment of privatisation and the whole practice of contracting out.
"It is disgraceful that on the one hand, you have huge pay rises for executives and dividends for shareholders while cleaners employed by the company are having to use foodbanks because their wages are appallingly low.
"This is why we are embarking on a national ballot of our cleaners which if successful will lead to over 1700 of them walking out across the country.”
END
Notes:
The cleaning companies are paid by government-funded Train Operating Companies to operate.
Cleaners strike ballot closes on Tuesday November 22.
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Tagged with: Cleaners, Justice For Cleaners, Churchill, Mitie, Atalian Servest
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