Posts Tagged ‘London Living wage’

The University of London Union (ULU) has agreed to let Birkbeck College top up the wages of staff employed in Birkbeck Students’ Union bar so the latter can live up to its commitment to the London Living Wage (LLW).

The contract to run the Birkbeck SU bar is held by ULU which currently pays staff there the same basic wage as on the ULU site, £6.10 an hour. Since Birkbeck SU and UCU passed policy on becoming a Living Wage employer, and Birkbeck governors recognised this, the issue has been a point of contention with ULU.

Sean Rillo Raczka, Birkbeck SU Chair, said that Birkbeck had threatened to break off the contract and bring its employees in house.

He said: “We first raised this with management about six months ago because we weren’t implementing in practice our policy commitment to the Living Wage. The ULU Trustees felt it wasn’t fair to pay different rates but technically and legally the Birkbeck bar is separate to the ULU bar. Although the contract is run by ULU, it’s a different site and so different wages can be paid.”

The Trustees say that ULU can’t afford to pay the full London Living Wage, £7.60 an hour, to all its staff, but ULU will not be financially affected by the new deal. Birkbeck will cover the cost of making up the difference from August 1st, when the higher rate will be paid to staff working at Birkbeck bar.

Rillo Raczka said the details of where the money would come from were yet to be decided, but he believes the college and not the SU should foot the bill.

ULU is also likely to increase staff pay on August 1^st, but it maintains that it cannot afford to pay all bar staff the full LLW. In April ULU announced that it would be able to pay cleaners the LLW after signing a contract with LPM Ltd; the new deal also saved the union £30,000.

Students campaigning for the Living Wage to be paid in universities are stepping up their efforts to target party leaders, while Gordon Brown has revealed that he campaigned for “decent pay” for cleaners while at university.

The group London Citizens have been working with students and sabbatical officers at several University of London colleges to pressure the university to ensure all cleaners are paid a ‘London Living Wage’ of at least £7.60 per hour. They say this figure – £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage – is the minimum needed to live with dignity in an expensive city like London.

Several colleges including Queen Mary, LSE, Birkbeck and SOAS already pay the London Living Wage (LLW) to cleaners, and the University of London Union (ULU) recently signed a new contract to pay its cleaning staff the LLW.

But many colleges – including UCL, Kings and the Institute of Education do not pay the LLW to cleaners, which campaigners hope to change.

The Prime Minister answered students’ questions on the website The Student Room, and recalled his involvement in campaigns to oppose apartheid and increase cleaners’ pay.

“The thing I’m proudest of as a student journalist was the campaign I led to get the University to disinvest from apartheid South Africa. It was a tough fight, but we won it, and it meant a lot to me to be able to talk with Nelson Mandela years later.

“I also got involved in the campaign for the cleaners to get decent pay and became the second student to be elected Rector, chairing the governing body of Edinburgh University”.

Mazdak Alizadeh, vice-president of ULU, told the BBC last week that the LLW is “a bare minimum.”

“It’s a figure that represents the reality of living in London – rather than living and working in poverty,” he said.

Alizadeh and London Citizens will have an opportunity to press party leaders on the living wage at a national assembly on May 3rd; days before the election. The Labour party have made it already made it a central tenet of their manifesto.

Cameron will answer question on The Student Room website this week. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg revealed on the site that he “wasn’t into student politics” while at university, and instead had interests ranging from acting to transcendental meditation.

The UCL Union will not be paying their staff the London Living Wage (LLW), despite pledging their support for the campaign in the October Welcome General Meeting.
The LLW initiative recommends that the national minimum wage be raised in London to £7.45 an hour to reflect the higher cost of living in the city.

In a UCLU council meeting on November 24th, members voted 24 to 9 against a motion to introduce LLW.

At the start of the debate the Clinical President Mandy Smith proposed a move to closed session – which would have excluded observers – on the grounds that it “could put the privacy of the union at risk”. This was rejected.

The LLW motion was proposed by the Environment and Ethics officer Craig Griffiths and council member Michael Chessum, who argued that wages should be increased to reflect the Union’s support for the wider London campaign.

Chessum said: “The London Living Wage is endorsed by that radical firebrand Boris Johnson. Until we pay our own staff the acceptable wage for living in London we cannot hope to successfully lobby the University as a whole.”

He cited ethical reasons for an increased wage, but also argued that evidence from Queen Mary’s experience provided a strong business case as well: “Well-paid staff are more motivated and efficient, take less sick-days, and perform better in the workplace.”

Finance and Democracy officer Andrew Caddy lead the opposition on the basis that the LLW would incur an extra £100,000 unbudgeted expenditure. Saying that the debate had been “emotionally hijacked” he argued that ­the recommended wage was unaffordable.

UCL union is one of the richest in the country, with £5 million in the bank, of which £1.89 is thought to be available for commercial services. It receives the biggest grant of any SU in the country – but some Council members expressed fears that with the university making cuts, the union’s grant would also be slashed.

UCL’s bars run at a significant loss and Caddy raised concerns that a bar closure might result from an increase in wages. would affect the core membership services the Union offers. James Hodgson, Student Activities Officer, also said the he believed “the union’s core values, the things we do best for our members, clubs and societies, would be seriously damaged by this.”

Josh Blacker, Education Officer, said he would like to pay staff more, but the Union’s financial position would not allow it, while Chessum accused the sabbaticals of having “only a skin-deep commitment” to the LLW.

Following Council’s rejection of the motion, Griffiths said the issue would be taken to the AGM in Februrary 2010.