Cleaners at UAL and their union have repeatedly called to be brought in-house and be employed on the same terms and conditions as directly employed staff. These calls have been ignored for too long.
Cleaners will strike to get the same terms and conditions as directly employed staff, and this fund will help cover their pay and expenses while they take this necessary action to get equal rights as workers.
Our campaign mission, to end outsourcing at UAL, can be found below:
University of the Arts London (UAL) must end the outsourcing of cleaning contracts across all its college and campus sites. UAL must directly employ (in-house) cleaning staff under contracts with the same terms and conditions as other UAL staff.
Outsourcing describes the employment practice of hiring private suppliers in the delivery of services, in this case, cleaning.
The following document will outline why this practice is:
1. Unethical, racist and discriminatory
2. Incompatible with UAL values
3. Economically imprudent
4. Ideological
Outsourcing enables UAL to indirectly employ cleaning staff on inferior terms and conditions to directly employed staff, with inferior pay, irregular and fewer working hours, poor holiday entitlements and maternity leave, no sick leave, and far greater insecurity – with fewer protections in place in case of dismissal, harassment and unsafe working conditions; a potentially fatal concern in the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Outsourced cleaning staff at UAL are, by majority, from Black, minority ethnic and migrant backgrounds, middle-aged and over, and are women. These identities are each uniquely marginalised and precarious, and intersect to make this particular staff group vulnerable to a number of external risks, including but not limited to:
1. Financial, food and housing precarity
2. Race, gender, and age discrimination
3. Victimisation under immigration law and policing
4. Poor health and disability
5. Poor access or non-existent access to healthcare and support
6. Infection and potential fatality due to Covid-19
UAL must end outsourcing.
If you would like to read more, you can check out our recent campaign report into outsourcing of cleaning contracts at UAL here: https://issuu.com/ualendoutsourcing/docs/ual_outsourcing_case_doc