The plight of cleaners struggling to make ends meet at University of London colleges looks set to continue, with Birkbeck College likely to decline to pay cleaners the wages they need to get by in the capital.

Campaigners at Birkbeck, King’s, UCL, the Institute of Education and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are currently campaigning for cleaning staff to be paid the London Living Wage, calculated by the GLA at £7.45 per hour and alleged to represent the minimum required rate for a decent standard of living in London.

But Birkbeck’s Finance and General Purposes Committee decided last week to recommend that the college not pay cleaners the Living Wage, instead using a lower rate of £6.50 per hour proposed by think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) based on figures from 2006.

The committee will now propose the lower rate to Birkbeck Governors at a meeting on Tuesday.

 Yet doubts were raised about the fairness of the rate Birkbeck is set to adopt when it emerged that the IPPR itself pays its cleaning staff the Living Wage, with the £6.50 figure proposed to the Government when it set the minimum wage in 2008.

A spokesperson for the IPPR said: “A Living Wage Employer recognises the responsibility it has for all the people it employs (directly or indirectly) and makes sure they are paid a Living Wage with fair employment conditions. This is now £7.45 an hour.”

The college blamed its alleged inability to pay the GLA’s proposed rate on the current financial situation, saying the decision: “should be viewed in the wider context in which the change is being made, the significant financial constraint in terms of the College’s own funding, [and] the wider impact now of a severe recession.”

Birkbeck Living Wage campaigner and Students’ Union officer Rob Park said: “It’s a bit double standards the IPPR itself pays the Living Wage,” saying of the Birkbeck management’s decision to opt for the lower rate: “they’ve gone for it because it doesn’t pose so much of a headache.”

Park, who sits on the Finance and General Purposes Committee, told committee members that: “the IPPR rate of £6.50, does not include the benefits which would bring equality of employment to ALL staff at Birkbeck.”

He added: “the creation of the single pay-spine three years ago, which resulted from national negotiation assured all staff of equal conditions and employment benefits.”

Student campaigners will demonstrate against the decision at the college during Tuesday’s Governors meeting.

Community organiser Mousa Baraka of London Citizens, the organisation coordinating Living Wage campaigns across London universities, said: “not only is that figure (£6.50) outdated, it’s not the Living Wage,” adding: “the GLA report shows this is the only rate to use, so why would they use something else?”

He accused Birkbeck management of “shying away” from paying the Living Wage, saying: “they know that the campaign has got stronger, but they don’t want to give in totally as they don’t want to give the campaigners power.”

The campaign has also won the support of Labour MP John McDonnell, who wrote in a letter to Birkbeck management: “I feel most strongly that that you are doing a grave disservice to loyal and hard working staff if you agree to continue paying them below a rate of £7.45 per hour.”

He called the college’s failure to bring cleaning services in-house: “a morally untenable position.”

He added that he intends to raise this matter in the House of Commons through an Early Day Motion, and will recruit other MPs to form a Parliamentary Support Group in order to publicise the issue.

Rob Park told London Student that campaigners are asking that McDonnell be allowed to speak to Governors on Tuesday.

Campaigners at SOAS also suspected that Birkbeck was against paying the Living Wage, claiming that Birkbeck management put pressure on SOAS for agreeing to pay cleaners the higher rate last year as the decision put Birkbeck in compromising position.

SOAS Unison representative Sandy Nicoll told London Student that the college’s management had been criticised for making the decision independently of other colleges in the Bloomsbury Consortium, which do not currently pay the Living Wage.

At King’s campaigners continued to raise awareness of the campaign on campus this week, with almost 400 students signing a petition as complaints of mistreatment of cleaners by contractors emerged.

One cleaner told campaigners, “They (management) treat some workers, those who are weak, very badly. For example they made them stay and clean on December 24th even when no one is there and which they were supposed to have off. The manager called her from his mobile, even after he left to make sure she didn’t leave.”

He added: “Some workers talk about how they are untouchable… I knew one worker, who has now left, who said he had an arrangement with the manager. He would get extra hours, and they would split them between them [the worker and the manager].”

Campaign coordinator Baraka told London Student that the now London-wide campaign may carry out a large-scale demonstration on May 1st as part of Labour Day celebrations.

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