The RCM is not alone in hiring some of London's lowest paid workers. Flickr/cactusbeetroot. Some rights reserved.
On the 26th May 2015, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) opened their campaign against the Royal College of Music (RCM) in order to improve the employment terms and conditions of some of London’s lowest paid workers. The campaign, called the 3 Cosas, had been carried out before, at the University of London, where outsourced workers faced the same precarious terms and conditions that those at the Royal College of Music do today. That campaign was successful and, in spring of 2015, the IWGB set their sights on the prestigious Royal College of Music.
“I can’t visit my family for a long time”
Among many of the issues surrounding the employment terms of outsourced workers in London, three things are consistently inadequate: sick pay, holiday pay and employer pension contributions. At the Royal College of Music, as at many other higher education institutions up and down the country, outsourced cleaners receive no occupational sick pay, the statutory minimum holiday as well as meagre employer pension contributions (if any at all). These terms and conditions contrast sharply with those of the College’s direct employees. The exploitative terms leave workers vulnerable; a lack of sick pay causes the employees to have to work when seriously ill, or injured. Wilson Ayala Romero, a cleaner at the Royal College of Music and the Campaigns officer for the University of London branch of the IWGB, revealed: “even if [we] show proof from a GP that we are ill, [we] still wouldn’t get paid. I know many of my co-workers in this situation… there is a lot of exploitation”.
