by Cary Gee
UNITE and London Citizens have launched a manifesto to try to improve pay and conditions for workers employed in the capital’s hospitality industry.
Rooms for Change: Putting London Hotels on Track for the Olympics is aimed at low paid hotel workers and wants to secure the London Living Wage for tens of thousands of employees before the Olympics in London in 2012.
Kevin Curran, chair of the central London hotel workers’ branch of Unite, who co-hosted the launch of the manifesto at Parliament with Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, accused hotels in the capital of being “unfit” for an Olympic host city.
Mr Curran said: “The heart of the problem is the treatment of workers and the management’s reliance on a transitory, migrant labour force that is hired and fired at will.”
He added: “Dickensian is not too strong a word to describe the conditions that prevail in some of London’s leading hotels.”
The London Living Wage was established in 2001 by London Citizens in collaboration with leading businesses and academics and is defined as “a wage that achieves an adequate level of warmth and shelter, a healthy diet, social integration and avoidance of chronic stress for earners and their dependents”.
It was backed by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and even the new Mayor, Boris Johnson, has said: “I look forward to the day when no Londoner is being paid less than the living wage.”
It is currently set at £7.45.
The campaign focused on hotel workers began in 2005 – and includes direct action.
A favoured tactic is the dining room sit-in where activists down knives and forks before standing up to denounce the hotel’s terms of employment in front of paying guests.
Mr Curran said: “Those at the bottom of the hotel’s employment hierarchy, such as room cleaners, porters and housekeepers, endure some of the worst pay and conditions of any workers in London.
“Their daily experience includes universal low pay, as well as bullying, harassment, lack of training and career advancement opportunities, and the indignity of being afforded scant or no respect.”
Omosofe Ajakaiye, a Unite member who works at a five-star hotel in London, told how she worked in the house keeping department for five years without a pay rise.
After joining the union, she received a rise which took her hourly rate of pay to just £6.94.
London Citizens are so keen to win the backing of a major employer in the hotel sector that they have even offered an award to any chain that meets the criteria to become a Living Wage Employer.
Leading employers in others sectors, including banks (HSBC, Barclays); universities (LSE, SOAS); retail outlets (Westfield); and many (but not all) Whitehall departments have already backed the London Living Wage.
Ian Tew, head of workplace at KPMG is in no doubt that paying the LLW is good for business.
He said: “It makes sense as a business strategy since it creates goodwill among customers, employees and the community.”
And he offered this warning to companies who insist on dodging their social responsibilities: “Trying to increase profits by being unethical or ignoring such concerns will eventually result in increased costs and zero short-term benefit.”
