Public and Commercial Services Union

After endorsement from our national executive committee PCS has recently launched our London Living Wage campaign that aims to ensure our members London receive at least £7.60 per hour.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London has also supported the move to pay all contractors a London Living Wage of £7.60 per hour, however in recent months he hasn’t been quite as supportive as his earlier comments suggested. We have also had support from the south east regional TUC and other organisations, such as the child poverty action group and London citizens.

While we know that our members are low paid, we are aware that many of them may also work alongside other staff in London on outsourced government contracts for cleaning, security, catering and portering who earn just above the minimum wage of £5.80 per hour, yet are performing a vital public service.

We want to ensure that every PCS member in London are able to have a decent standard of living by receiving at least £7.60 per hour and also that they have the opportunity to be a member of a trade union to raise their concerns with management.

While this campaign is a new aspect of our work on pay we will continue to campaign for better pay for all of our members by moving to one national set of negotiations which could save millions of pounds a year.

Campaign inspiration

Our campaign is inspired by recent successes by the RMT gaining wage increases for cleaners on London underground and also the inspirational campaign which continues to be fought in America called ‘justice for janitors’.

We are currently undertaking research so we can start to target which government departments have outsourced contracts and what their rates of pay are before we start the next phase of the campaign which will involve negotiations; public, media and parliamentary activity.