Cleaners’ rights campaign launched
Industry taskforce unveils campaign to improve the working conditions of cleaners.
A campaign to promote good working conditions in the cleaning industry has been launched by an industry-led taskforce set up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a statutory body established under the Equality Act 2006. It operates as an independent body to protect and promote equality and human rights in Great Britain.
It aims to encourage equality and diversity, eliminate unlawful discrimination, and promote and protect human rights.
The Commission enforces equality legislation on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.
It encourages compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998 and is accredited by the UN as an ‘A status’ National Human Rights Institution.
The industry-led taskforce behind this new campaign, and which is chaired by the EHRC’s deputy chair Caroline Waters, includes leading businesses, trade associations and trade unions.
The Commission convened the taskforce following publication of its report called ‘The Invisible Workforce: employment practices in the cleaning sector’.
The Commission launched a project to examine employment practices in the cleaning sector in England, Scotland and Wales in September 2013; the EHRC wanted to understand how employers comply with their equality obligations in the work place and respect human rights.
The focus was on standardised, non-domestic cleaning in the office, health, retail, transport and leisure sectors as these are the four largest users of cleaning services and the findings were published in August 2014.
This set out the findings on employment practices in the commercial cleaning sector in England, Scotland and Wales.
The report found many examples of good practice.
These included cleaning firms with policies in place to promote equality and also clients who enter into longer-term contracts. These help firms to develop positive relationships with suppliers and also encourage investment in workforce development, leading to greater job stability.
The report also found that some employers did not provide contracts to staff – and that employers some failed to pay their employees in full, or to pay sickness or holiday leave entitlements.
Many cleaning operatives are female migrants who spoke of being ‘invisible’, of being treated badly compared to other employees, and said they did not understand their rights.
To solve these problems the taskforce has developed some ‘principles for responsible procurement’, the purpose of which is to encourage clients who buy in cleaning services to consider the impact of procurement on the employment practices of ‘cleaning providers’.
The taskforce also developed a poster to highlight the value of cleaning operatives, and Your Rights at Work postcards for cleaning firms to send to their employees explaining their employment rights.
All of the materials can be downloaded from the Commission’s website.
Caroline Waters said: “The Commission’s role is to promote and enforce the laws that protect our rights to fairness, dignity and respect.
“It has been a great privilege to have worked over the past year or so with so many people who are committed to improving the working conditions of cleaning operatives,” she continued.
“It is fantastic that taskforce members drawn from across business, industry, trade associations, government, voluntary bodies and trade unions have come together with their thoughts, ideas and energy, and with a real appetite for tackling the problems our original report revealed.
“We very much hope the tools we have now produced will help to bring real and lasting change for commercial cleaning operatives.”
For, as UNISON’s Michelle Singleton, wrote, ‘The initial research established what many of us have suspected for some time, that despite many areas of good practice, cleaners are still a largely invisible workforce and can be subject to some of the worst employment practices and human rights abuses in the UK .
‘Key issues for all of us such as fairness, dignity and respect were all recurring themes for dissatisfaction amongst the workers in this sector.
‘The cleaning sector has been ignored for too long and this work will go a long way to highlight issues in the sector and to raise the profile of cleaners in the workplace.’