Mayoral contenders criticise Hackney Council over cleaners low pay
Hackney Council has been accused of making a 'pact with poverty' over cleaners' low pay Photo: © Hackney Citizen
Other mayoral candidates have criticised Hackney’s current mayor Jules Pipe over a recently renewed council cleaning contract that pays workers less than the London Living Wage.
The London Living Wage (LLW), introduced by the previous London Mayor Ken Livingstone‘s administration five years ago, is a London weighted minimum wage, which takes into account the higher living costs of London. The figure currently stands at £7.60 per hour; £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage.
Andrew Boff, Conservative candidate for Mayor commented, “Jules Pipe spouts about it [the London Living Wage] but recently was happy to authorise a Learning Trust contract to KGB for school cleaning that would see operatives working for very much lower than the Living Wage of £7.60 an hour.
“This is a pact with poverty and Labour councillors have supported it. If Hackney Council was serious about the Living Wage they wouldn’t be producing “comparison” tenders. They should only be producing tenders with the [London] Living Wage built into them.”
Mischa Borris, Green party candidate for Mayor said, “The news that Hackney Council is knowingly allowing its cleaners to be paid below the London Living Wage, having them work long and anti-social hours on wages that makes it hard to survive in London, is shocking and unacceptable.
“The council has a duty to the taxpayers of Hackney to deliver its services under its Best Value legislation. However, when Best Value means having its cleaners work for a substandard wage, I think that the council needs to seriously re-evaluate its priorities.
“Hackney Council signed up to the London Living Wage to great fanfare in 2005, meaning that all of their staff will receive at least a higher minimum wage that takes into account higher living costs in London.
“That the council should breach this is not only bad news for the cleaners now having to survive on low wages, but also for the reputation of the council as fair employers.”
Adrian Gee-Turner, Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor said, “[We] need to have a public sector lead from Councils for the London Living Wage. Yes, the council has signed up to it for employed staff, but I was around when the Best Value Program (using external contractors) was put together and you can take local issues into account.
“We should tip the balance to local suppliers for the cleaning contracts and insist in London Living Wage, and demonstrate the Best Value practice for the welfare of Hackney in the round and not in isolation.”
Monty Goldman, Communist candidate for Mayor said, “I fully support the London Living Wage and believe that it is the only way to ensure Londoners do not live below the poverty line. I am extremely disappointed that the Council has put ‘Best Value’ before principle, something unscrupulous employers do on a regular basis.
“Indeed this approach mirrors that of the Tory Mayor of London in his behaviour on the Underground. Moral and correct behaviour cannot be expected from all employers who are often too busy chasing pennies to care about the living standards of their employees but the people of Hackney should expect better from their democratic institutions”.
A spokesperson for Hackney Council said, “The London Living Wage was carefully considered in the award of the 2009 cleaning services contract. It was not possible to apply the London Living Wage for this contract as it saw a significant increase in costs to the Council from all bidders which did not fit with Best Value legislation.”
“All bidders were informed of the Council’s support for the London Living Wage and were asked if they paid their staff the London Living Wage. If not, they were asked what if any effect payment of London Living Wage this would have upon costs.
“All submitted increased bids (around 26 per cent more) for London Living Wage and none of the bidders offered improvement on any of the quality criteria arising from payment of the London Living Wage.
“All local authorities are obliged to consider Best Value legislation in everything they do, including the award of contracts and Hackney has had a great deal of success in improving the quality of its services and getting better value for money for local taxpayers.
Best value legislation was introduced in 1999 by the current Government.
In 2008, government ministers and Hackney residents Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper launched an attack on the London Living Wage – the then £7.45 an hour recommended minimum for all workers in the capital. They said it would was not “necessary or appropriate.”
According to SERTUC (Southern and Eastern Trades Union Congress), “When negotiating with public sector organisations for the implementation of living wage policies through supply chains, one argument that unions often face is ‘it’s contrary to public procurement legislation’.
“It’s often reported by council officers and elected members that there’s nothing they can do about putting a living wage threshold in contracts – this is simply not the case as the Greater London Authority is illustrating. There is no definitive legal opinion on this subject as no case has been brought to court and therefore no legal precedent has been set.”
The London Living Wage is paid to all Greater London Authority staff and also to all workers sub-contracted to deliver services on behalf of the authority.
SERTUC continues, “According to Recital 33 of the EU Procurement Directive on Public Services and Utilities, a public sector organisation [such as Hackney Council] can adopt a living wage policy stipulating that quality and good value depend on good employment practices.
“Choice of bidder should not be based on lowest price alone. Bidders should be evaluated on terms and conditions, training, industrial relations, union recognition, health and safety and social impact. Under EU rules, contracts can be awarded on the basis of “most economically advantageous tender”, not just the lowest price.
“The European Court of Justice in the Helsinki Concordia Bus case (c-513199) decided that “factors which are not purely economic may influence the value of a tender from the point of view of the contracting authority”.
Hackney Citizen has asked the Council whether Best Value legislation was taken into account when determining the salaries of Hackney Council’s highest paid officers, who have ultimate responsibility for negotiating and managing Council contracts and is awaiting its response.
According to the Town Hall Rich List, a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the highest paid council officers include:
Chief Executive £117,956
Corporate Directors of:
Community Services £131,698
Neighbourhood and Regeneration £131,698
Legal and Democratic Services £131,698
Customer and Corporate Services £131,698
Finance and Resources £131,698
Deputy Directors of:
Children and Young People £107,469
Neighbourhood and Regeneration (Acting) £107,469
Community Services (Acting) £107,469
Update: Hackney Council responded 6.10pm Tuesday 4 May.
A spokesman said, “Like all local authorities, Hackney has to ensure it achieves best value in its use of resources.
“The Council needs talented people to deliver consistently improving services for residents and businesses whilst ensuring value for money – the government announced last year that Hackney had achieved the country’s third highest total of efficiency savings.
“Salaries are in line with other London authorities, and represent a tiny fraction of the workforce of over 3,700 and the gross budget of over £1 billion.”
Great article and a very important subject. I’m looking at the undersupply of employment as the cause of sub-living wages and conditions. Any word on the wages paid by the Citizen’s publisher’s Cleaners? Is the Citizen squeaky clean or its production being subsidised on the back of powerless and unorganised unskilled manual labour? I hope not but then again I’m pretty certain I know the answer. Then how about the Cleaners of your readers offices? Do they give a monkies? Again I very much hope they find out and stand in solidarity throughout the utter tedium of achieving a living wage for their ‘untouchable’ co-workers. Taking the plank out of one’s own eye allows one to see for the very first time. Just consider Pastor Martin Niemöller’s misquoted point: ‘First they came for the Cleaners and I did nothing because I wasn’t a Cleaner.’ Who’s next? That’s right, you.
What a bizarre, mean-spirited, and failed attempt at obfuscation.
It may very well be hypocritical of the Hackney Citizen to criticise the council for indirectly employing cleaners at sub-Living Wage rates, as you suggest, they too engage in the same practice.
However, the Labour voters of Hackney who, I think you will find overwhelmingly support the London Living Wage, should reasonably expect a Labour, and therefore democratic socialist, Mayor to ensure that the LLW is extended to all employees of the council.
We did not elect the publishers of the Hackney Citizen but we did elect Jules Pipe as our Mayor. Their respective obligations to the people of Hackney are therefore entirely different from one another.
The “utter tedium of achieving a living wage” may be an irrelevance to you, Mr Keenan, but I can assure you that had you ever had to support a family on a sub-optimal minimum wage, your attitude would be quite different.
While you ask whether the Hackney Citizen’s readers even “give a monkies” about the council’s failure to ensure that its employees receive the minimum wage, I think it would be more illuminating for your fellow Labour Party members to know whether you do?
Helloo Spirit Leveller!
Well I sat through Full Council when the subject was debated, have sat through meetings of my political party where the subject was discussed, and now fully understand the legal obstacles to achieving a living wage for the local authority’s sub-contractors and the wider consequences of providing exceptions to any legal system. Good point about the Executive and Non-Executive being elected and the 4th Estate being self-appointed and I agree that while the State needs to maintain the highest moral and ethical standard, I disagree that the private sector is above reproach and need not act without moral or ethical concern such as paying less than a living wage to both full-time and casualised staff.
I also sit through the Overview & Scrutiny Board (O&S), Community Safety & Social Inclusion (CS&SI) and Governance & Resources (G&R) Scrutiny Commissions, year after year, and am beginning to tell the difference between the positive phrases in common use and the ineffectiveness that they obfuscate, and as governance is the only variable on our children’s economic and social outcomes, I am very serious about ending child poverty and working age worklessness, by seeing effective governance normalised. The State’s obligation is to provide the mechanism for self-governance while the 4th Estate’s obligation is to provide the information needed for freedom and for self-governance and no I have yet to see journalists from the Gazette, the Today, or the Citizen at any of these three meetings of the business of the Council.
Consideration of the business of the Council here, or anywhere else for that matter, is at best 2nd hand, if not shamefully 3rd hand, and the Electorate deserve much, much more from its commentators and its reporters; the utter tedium of attending public meeting of the business of the Council is not an irrelevance but then I seem to be the only one in attendance. It is those in attendance that will achieve a living wage, while all the ill informed commentary, however passionately presented, is easily dismissed as irrelevant and is even in a very fundamental way counter-productive!
As for my attitude changing as my economic status changes, I have given it some thought and, also based upon previous experience, I can’t foresee my passion and commitment to my family and our community diminishing or escalating due to anything other than ill health. I hate being this poorly served by both the State and the private sector as an employee and as a customer. There is clearly proven market failure and governance failure in the continued existence of sub-living wages, not to mention 32% rate of working age worklessness, and I am continuing to take practical steps to stopping, once and for my lifetime, our continued failure to supply sufficient employment to price sub-living wages and conditions out of the market.
I’m not shy, I’m not afraid, and I certainly don’t hide; I mean, why would anyone blunt their effectiveness? Anyway, I do hope to see you at the public meetings of the business of the Council and its strategic partnership Team Hackney, especially with the Total Place programme, Total Assets & Capital pathfinder programme, Local Economic Assessment, Child Poverty Assessment, Economic Development Strategy, and Street Markets Strategy all coming up. Oops, maybe I shouldn’t be doing the job of the 4th Estate, or the 40+ strong Council communications Officers and Staff? Just imagine what two people could disseminate if one person can achieve this much, or 40 professionals, three local newspapers, and two local magazines for that matter!
Yours sincerely
Jed Keenan
Firstly, may I congratulate you tireless attempt to attend as many of the council’s public meetings as is humanly possible. However, their effect seems to have been to convince you of the legitimacy of institutionalised income inequality, leading you to “understand the legal obstacles to achieving a living wage for the local authority’s sub-contractors and the wider consequences of providing exceptions to any legal system” rather than encouraging you to follow your conscience as a member of the Labour Party and, instead, seek means by which the council can circumvent the problems it has encountered.
I don’t think that I stated at any point that “the private sector is above reproach and need not act without moral or ethical concern such as paying less than a living wage to both full-time and casualised staff” – maybe you could highlight where I did so? On the contrary, since the larger proportion of low-paid work currently falls within the private sector, the incentive to legislate for a living wage for everybody is that much greater.
My point on the respective obligations of the council and, as you put it, the 4th estate, is this: while the private sector has obligations towards its employees, the public sector, led, as it is, by political entities, not only has these duties towards its employees but also towards the electorate. I need not remind you, then, that such entities – in this case, the strategic mayoralty of Hackney – ought to employ the kinds of policies that broadly accord with the views and opinions of the people who’ve placed their faith in them at the ballot box.
I think you are quite aware that the overwhelming majority of those who have historically voted for a labour candidate in the mayoral elections expect a labour administration to remunerate its workforce fairly. Sadly, a ‘slight of hand’ occurs when that administration outsources public services to private sector contractors – who are actively encouraged to drive down the cost of contracts with the consequence being lower wages for employees – in order to cross-finance ‘council tax freezes’ that put a tiny amount of money back in to the pockets on the borough’s taxpayers, in exchange for what are often inferior services. Still, ‘council tax freeze’ looks good on a campaign leaflet and that’s what matters, doesn’t it?
My position the payment of a living wage is quite clear. The living wage should be legislated for at the national level, encompassing a variation for London, and imposed accordingly; it should also be indexed to increases in average earnings so it doesn’t fall behind growth in the rest of the economy. I would expect you to agree with this viewpoint and undertake, as a member of the Labour Party, with no doubt close links to local members of the National Executive Committee, to elevate this to the highest levels of the party possible?
You say you “don’t hide” and, yet, rather than state explicitly that you doubt the efficacy of a living wage, you seek to sow confusion by saying that you are “beginning to tell the difference between the positive phrases in common use and the ineffectiveness that they obfuscate”. Since you obviously doubt the efficacy of a living wage – which is by no means the only way of reducing negative social phenomena and income inequality – perhaps you’d like to explain how the market, which is riven with failure and misallocation, can deliver decreases in income inequality or even if you regard such an outcome as a goal worth pursuing?
In typically mean-spirited fashion, you imply that my non-attendance at council meetings is somehow evidence of my lack of commitment to the delivery of a minimum wage for all direct and indirect employees of the council. If you honestly expect me to believe that a living wage will be achieved by individuals clocking up time at council meetings, which you’ll know from experience, are often tributes to inertia and obfuscation, I’m afraid you’re going to have pull the other one
While I would agree that the local press is failing its readers by not scrutinising the work of the council as extensively as possible, what ultimately matters is whether or not facts are being reported, regardless of the basis upon which those facts are obtained. Where those facts reveal unpleasant truths about labour administrations, our duty is to lobby extensively for reform, not to attack those reporting them.