Outsourced facilities workers need Labour’s New Deal – PCS union

Labour’s New Deal for Working People is a plan to make Britain better for working people. They have pledged to write it into law within 100 days of getting elected.

The plan commits to:

• Strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and conditions.
• Ensure all workers are entitled to basic rights and protections like sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, flexible working and protection against unfair dismissal from day one.
• Carry out the largest wave of insourcing in a generation.
• End the practice of employers firing and rehiring workers on worse terms.
• Ban zero hours contracts.

PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote will lead PCS’s delegation at the event, joining the RMT, Unite the Union and the TUC to explain to MPs how Labour’s New Deal will transform the working lives of outsourced facilities workers including. catering, cleaning, security and other facilities staff.

Outsourced facilities management staff employed on central government, Metropolitan Police Service and museum and gallery contracts traditionally have some of the worse employment conditions in the UK.

While most facilities staff were designated as key workers during the coronavirus pandemic, most:

• Earn the government’s statutory minimum wage, currently £10.42 per hour.
• Are only entitled to statutory sick pay which is only paid after the third day of illness and at a significantly reduced rate of £109.40 per week or £21.88 per week.
• Are not covered by a trade union recognition agreement to allow them to bargain over their pay and terms and conditions.
• Employed in the FM sector, particularly cleaning and catering staff in urban areas are from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background, do not have English as their first language and are overwhelmingly female.

Fran Heathcote said

“I am pleased that trade unions are joining forces for this important event. A Labour government must end the outsourcing of public facilities contracts. The current model is broken and riddled with institutional racism. We need to expose that taxpayers are funding outsourcing giants whose sole interest is to prioritise profits at the expense of their employees and public services.”