1,000 signatures reached
To: Phil Bentley, CEO Mitie Group; Andrew Haines, CEO Network Rail
Network Rail and Mitie – Pay the Living Wage to ALL your cleaners
Pay the Living Wage to ALL your cleaners
Why is this important?
Imagine you’re employed by an outsourcing giant who paid their shareholders more money in the last five years than you could dream of, while you struggle to make ends meet. You clean buildings owned by Network Rail, a publicly owned company, and you learn that your colleagues who clean their stations will now get the Living Wage, but you won’t, even though some them work in the same building as you. You raise this with your manager, who just laughs at you. This is not just a story, this is happening to hard-working cleaning staff working for our railways now.
In October this year, RMT cleaners who work for outsourcing giant Mitie and clean Network Rail stations won the Real Living Wage after a massive national campaign involving a 38 Degrees petition signed by 82,000 people and motions in the Westminster and Scottish parliaments. You’d think that Mitie and Network Rail would have got the point and made sure that they pay the Real living Wage to all their staff. Yet scandalously, both Mitie and Network Rail are still exploiting low paid cleaners.
Cleaners employed by Mitie but working on Network Rail’s Estates contract, cleaning administrative buildings, maintenance depots and control centres are still being paid poverty wages. Some of them work in the same buildings as colleagues who are now being paid the Living Wage and our members report managers laughing at them for thinking they should be paid the same.
This is outrageous. Mitie is a massive company which made £33 million in profit in just the last six months and has passed on £177 million to its shareholders in the last five years. Its CEO Phil Bentley took home £2.2 million last year. It would take one of Phil’s cleaners 176 years work to earn the same amount as he made in 12 months.
Network Rail know that they’re in the wrong and say they’re reviewing their contracts, but that’s not good enough. Network Rail and Mitie need to fix this now. EVERYONE who works for Network Rail through a contract with Mitie should be paid at least the Living Wage, now.
