Yesterday I visited a group of cleaners at Massey University’s Wellington campus. (apologies for poor photo quality). Along with their colleagues on the campuses in Palmerston North and Albany they are employed by OCS Limited to do the cleaning. OCS took over the contract for cleaning a couple of months ago and are pushing through changes to their employment conditions that are just shocking.
OCS have decided to move the workers from largely full time jobs to new jobs that will guarantee them only 25 hours a week for the 31 weeks of peak university time, and no guarantee of hours for the remaining 21 weeks of the year. The way they are doing this is by making the workers redundant and offering them new contracts with the reduced hours.
This is unfair and unjust. It will equate to a 35% drop in wages. These people are not well paid. They get just above the minimum wage. Many of them travel from Porirua to Wellington to work. While OCS as the contractor has the responsibility for the contracts it is concerning that this is happening on a publicly funded university campus. I have written to Steve Maharey as Vice-Chancellor expressing my concern.
The Service and Food Workers Union are taking the redundancy proposal to court on Thursday, as OCS are offering no redundancy pay. Anyone interested in supporting the workers I understand that some of them hope to be at the High Court in Wellington tomorrow from 9am onwards.
If they have a union Grant why then are you attempting to interfere in their contractual arrangements.
The reasoning is pretty sound to me. OCS is a business (yes dirty word to you lot I know) not a charity. They can operate more efficiently by restructuring their business so it is a more hours dependent role (which by the very nature of the academic years and so forth it so obviously is).
They will have no doubt put this out to the workers and the union for discussion and consultation as obliged to under the ERA and they would have made their decision and taken the steps they have now taken.
Legally there is nothing wrong with this, all this is is Grant Robertson saying oh look and this big mean business they are bad people blah blah blah well summon the marching band!
Ben explain to me who gets the benefits of this new low wage based business efficiency?
I think the workers should set up their own contracting company and bid for the uni contracts.
@ Loota,
1. well duh it is their business etc… fortunately we don’t live in North Korea
2. Completely agree
I don’t know what they’ll be doing at the High Court given this is an employment issue
Man, underpaid cleaners
The glee the Rights have at seeing low paid workers squeezed even further is quite notable.
‘Its just business, its nothing personal’ I suppose is the line.
Oh, until someone decides to take it personally of course.
I should say Grant, OCS has cleaning contracts down here at Otago Uni. Perhaps you and Pete should have a chat…
@ Loota “I think the workers should set up their own contracting company and bid for the uni contracts.”
And what kind of pay rates do you think that they will be offering cleaners to work for them – LOL They will be no different themselves.
Charming behaviour, Nice to see that the good folk at OCS give a damn for their employees.
Perhaps if people like Ben found themselves being treated in such a dreadful manner they would understand the importance of shining a light on this sort of reprehensible behaviour..
They should strike, the universities will soon be freaking out when they have posh guests and the flies are a buzzing
@Ben. I am involved because the Union and workers asked me to be as the electorate MP who covers Massey Wellington. In any case I will always stand up for people who I think are not being treated fairly. Businesses, like anyone else, need to be held accountable where there actions are unfair and unjust.
Whether there is anything illegal going on is the subject of the court case on Thursday.
Steve Maharey should intervene.
Minimum redundancy provisions would help solve many of these cases by adding a restructuring cost.
The Vice-Chancellor must be a right tosser for letting something like this happen to poorly paid cleaners.
@Hayden : well funny you should say that, but the NACts don’t agree!
What are they going to do for the other 21 weeks of the year..?
Can someone please explain to me why a private business should be required to pay people to do nothing 40% of the year..?
Maybe for the fun of it?
Sounds like the company is reducing cleaning hours by 33,000. I guess reducing hours to part-time is an alternative to laying some staff off completely. They might find that as natural attrition occurs, the hours for remaining staff go up again. Given that the cleaners were only employed by OCS from 1/7/10, it’s a bit rough on an employer if they are entitled to redundancy having only been employed for that long. On the other hand, a “good faith” employer would have informed them of the restructure before they were employed.
Ahhh…OCS gets good rates from the university, and pay the front line staff only a small share of that total contract value.
The cleaners should set up for themselves and cut out the useless middle man. Hmmmmm a co-operative would work well.
Can someone please explain to me why a private business shouldn’t properly capacity manage their work force, hire a baseline number of staff full time throughout the year and then add in peak temps as required?
You know, use some frakin proper management instead of lazy-ass management?
By the way I’m not putting all the blame on this situation for OCS necessarily – this may be happening because universities are being forced to cut costs and they are telling subcontractors the same.
“Can someone please explain to me why a private business shouldn’t properly capacity manage their work force, hire a baseline number of staff full time throughout the year and then add in peak temps as required?”
You don’t know that, it is possible there is no work what-so-ever in the other 21 weeks of the year due to a change competely outside their control, so no way to keep a baseline number of staff year round… They aren’t a charity…
It is in this issue ABOUT THE PEOPLE!!!!! being treated fairly.
SHUT UP!!!! If you are not intrested in the REAL PEOPLE AFFECTED ( cleaners).
WAKE UP!!!!!!! everyone else, because this affects ALL of us NATIONALLY, 32,000 cleaners.
below is my emial to Mr. Maharey:
I am 3rd year nursing student at Massey university Wellington.
I have greatly enjoyed studying at Massey and will soon enter the workforce as a respected and highly paid (relative to many New Zealanders and most of the world) professional. As a student I have enjoyed clean facilities due to the hard work of the cleaning staff, as a health professional I can only do my job thanks, again, the hard work of cleaning staff. As I’m sure you are aware, the biggest increases in population health come from clean water, good sanitation and rubbish removal. Cleaners will probable maker a greater contribution to health than I ever will, yet at a fraction of the pay. I know that wouldn’t want to work as a cleaner, I think it is a hard job that is greatly undervalued and underpaid.
Please support our cleaners to earn a liveable wage.
Your sincerely
Jesse
We are presently doing a cleaning Job via WINZ reference.
I thought the minimum wage was over $12.70 Per hour after tax.
Try doing over 18 hours of cleaning and only getting $136.44 cents. Advised Employer hours worked and doesn’t appear interested in doing anything about it when asked. Labour Dept dont seem to want to get involved. So where to from here.? So it appears these Cleaning Companies can get away with paying what they like. Is this the most underpaid job around.????
C’mon Stu, dont you realise you just need to work harder and smarter to get a better job, until then you you aren’t worthy of better conditions, or even living conditions.
Tracey. Just go and get a life. Don’t need a reply from a half wit.
Did somebody say half wit?
!
Here I am!