RMT and the TUC in London and the South East have teamed up produced an extremely useful briefing, setting out the case for Tube cleaning to be brought in house.
The contract, currently held by ABM, is up for renewal next year. RMT is pressuring Sadiq Khan’s Labour administration to bring the work in house rather than re-tendering the contract. Being directly employed by LU would give cleaners access to the same staff travel passes, pensions, and sick pay arrangements directly-employed staff currently receive.
A real campaign needs to be organised around the briefing, including online/social media campaigning and, as soon as it becomes viable, physical protests targeting City Hall.
There are clear precedents for such a step: as well as the in-housing of cleaning on Transport for Wales mentioned in the briefings, campaigns by the United Voices of the World union and the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain have secured the in-housing of outsourced services at Imperial NHS Trust, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London School of Economics, Goldsmiths University, and the University of London.
