2 February 2023
RMT Press Office:
After years of campaigning, RMT has won staff free travel for 5,800 TfL cleaners.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan today announced he will extend staff free travel to all sub-contracted cleaners who work on London’s transport system following years of campaigning by RMT.
The union had already won free travel for around 5,000 sub-contracted cleaners at TfL.
And now 800 more cleaners, including those working at MTR Crossrail and on London Overground will have the same right.
Last weekend, at an RMT fringe during London Labour conference, we made the case for the Mayor to do more for TfL’s cleaners, including extending the free travel benefit, improving other employment conditions and ending the scourge of outsourcing by bringing them into direct employment.
Responding to today’s announcement by the Mayor, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said:
“This is another step in the right direction by the Mayor of London and we’re calling on him to extend it to all TfL sub-contracted workers.
"Sadiq Khan’s welcome action stands in stark contrast to the Tories who earlier in the week forced legislation through the House of Commons that would remove these workers’ right to strike. Instead of attacking cleaners, the Tories should be following the Mayor’s lead and ensuring all rail cleaners have free travel.
"However, the Mayor needs to do more too. Labour nationally has committed to oversee the biggest wave of insourcing of public services for a generation when it’s elected. London’s Mayor is already in power, so we’ll be stepping up our campaign for Sadiq to tackle the scourge of outsourcing in TfL, starting by bringing London’s Underground cleaners in-house.”
END
Notes for editors:
In September last year, Sadiq Khan announced that Tube cleaners would get free travel, like other TfL employees. RMT pressed the Mayor to extend this more generally to employees of sub-contractors. The Mayor’s announcement extends free travel to sub-contacted cleaners but not yet to others like security guards.
Labour’s New Deal for Working People pledges that Labour in government will end the presumption in favour of outsourcing and ‘oversee the biggest wave of insourcing of public services for a generation: A New Deal for Working People - The Labour Party
RMT has launched a petition calling on Sadiq Khan to end the outsourcing of London Underground’s cleaners and bring them into direct employment: https://www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/bring-london-s-tube-cleaners-in-house
RMT is campaigning for cleaners across the rail industry, fighting to win them better pay and conditions, through its ‘Cleaners are essential’ campaign: https://www.rmt.org.uk/campaigns/rail/cleaners-are-essential/
Outsourcing is rife within transport cleaning, as RMT exposed in its report, Cleaning Up the Railways: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-publications/cleaning-up-the-railways/
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Tagged with: RMT, London Underground, Cleaners, Mick Lynch, Tube, TfL, Sadie Khan, Mayor of London,
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