Victoria wakes up before dawn each day to travel into central London to clean the halls of Senate House, the centre of a network of the capital’s most prestigious universities.
However, she is not employed directly by the University of London (UoL) and has worse terms and conditions than directly employed staff.
“I start work at 6am each day,” the Colombian grandmother says. “Cleaning offices, mopping, dusting and taking the bins out.”
After several hours, she relocates but must carry her heavy equipment. Last year she required major surgery after debilitating back pain at work left her unable to sleep properly.
“I informed my supervisor about the situation but after a month of sick leave I didn’t receive any payment,” she says. “Then they tried to say I was just on an extended holiday. Then that the surgery was aesthetic and they shouldn’t cover it. ‘We’re not going to pay for your beauty surgery’, they told me.”
She recalls how stressful the experience was: “I thought they would dismiss me. It was horrible, I got ill.”
Once the IWGB union threatened action, the services company Cordant, her employer who are contracted to provide cleaning services on campus, promptly paid her the £3,500 for the two-and-a-half months she had been off sick. The workers had been granted occupational sick pay following a previous campaign.
Victoria is just one worker who has been able to win back their rights and days after the Guardian conducted these interviews, UoL announced its intention to bring security and cleaning staff in-house by November 2020.
Pressure had been growing on the university to bring the workers in-house, with student anti-outsourcing demonstrations leading to a reported 200 events being relocated and the University and College Union voting to boycott Senate House.
Unions warn that many more people are stuck in workplace disputes at universities due to language barriers and fears of managerial repercussions, with staff elsewhere speaking of being “exploited” by contracts that leave them treated like “outcasts”, and others describing alleged attempts to privatise them “by stealth”.
Kenneth – an outsourced security guard at UoL – said a sudden drop in his hours made him in effect part-time.
The father-of-four became depressed, struggled to pay his bills and had to stop sending money to his elderly grandmother – which she depends on.
When he began working at Senate House last year, the insecurity of his initial contract meant he often did not know if he was working the next day. “We had to wait for them to structure our lives,” he said. “We couldn’t make plans for ourselves.”
Although the IWGB union helped him to secure a 60-hour contract, he adds that being outsourced makes him feel like an “outcast”.
“People want to feel a sense of belonging, like we work for the University of London. We don’t feel like we belong to anywhere.”
Cordant did not respond to requests for comment.
Names were changed to protect identities.
