Cleaning up the Sector: A better future of work for cleaners
Read the Full Report.
This report - published with Autonomy - brings together the findings of a year-long project by the Centre for Progressive Change, which surveyed and interviewed 500 cleaners across the UK to report on working conditions in commercial cleaning and to imagine a better future for the sector.
In the Listening Campaign we heard from 520 cleaners using online surveys (209 participants); one-to-one interviews (28 participants); house meetings (85 participants); Facebook forums (37 participants); Issues Workshops (53 participants); and imagination events (108 participants).
The key findings of our report are as follows:
70% of respondents said excessive workloads were a problem. Participants cited underpayment and negative health impacts as the key negative results of excessive workloads.
The experiences described by participants in our research demonstrates that working in the cleaning sectors comes with many risks to both the worker’s physical and mental health. Participants regularly used terms such as ‘backbreaking’ ‘abusive’, ‘inhumane’, ‘painful’ and ‘stressful’ to describe issues such as workloads and shift work.
Despite this, just 21% of the participants in our research reported being allowed to take sick leave. Unsurprisingly, ‘sick pay’ was the issue raised most frequently by participants in our Listening Campaign.
34% of respondents mentioned low pay as a key issue. Many cleaners emphasised that the National Minimum Wage (NMW) is simply not enough to live off, particularly when working volatile shifts, which create significant uncertainty around income. Many other participants mentioned issues of underpayment, wage theft, as well as difficulty utilising the legislative avenues available to challenge employers who refused to pay.
Overall, 32% of cleaners involved in our research raised issues related to bullying, harassment and discrimination. Asked directly if they had been discriminated against, harassed or assaulted at work, 53% of our survey respondents said they had. 22% of English speakers had experienced discrimination, harassment or assault, while 59% of non-English speakers had experienced these issues.
27% of respondents mentioned short, anti-social and split shifts as a key issue in the cleaning sector.
24% of participants in our research were on zero-hour contracts, and 20% mentioned job insecurity as a key concern. These participants emphasised that shift work comes with a host of problems, namely financial insecurity, volatile hours, invisibilization and negative health impacts. Indirect impacts of volatile working patterns included problems accessing rental accommodation and state welfare.
Cleaners in our Imagination Campaign and Issues Workshops came up with a number of pragmatic and intuitive proposals for how employers could help to improve working conditions in the sector:
Employers should raise staff levels. Increasing the number of staff would help to solve problems with both excessive workloads and short, volatile shifts by spreading the work more evenly across a greater number of workers.
Employers should ensure that all cleaners are offered sick pay, regardless of how much they earn, from the first day that they are off sick, and pay sick pay in line with the real Living Wage. If a cleaner is paid less than the real Living Wage then they should be paid sick pay in line with their wages.
Employers should pay the Real Living Wage. This would help to make sure that cleaners can at the very least afford housing, utilities, food and other basic items.
Employers should implement regular auditing of contractors, supervisors and line-managers. Regular staff surveys to gather workers’ views and help firms identify problem areas before they become serious.
Employers and clients should move to a model of daytime cleaning. This would be less disruptive to the worker’s sleep, health and family and social life. It would also mean that cleaning is no longer invisible work, which would have important knock on effects in terms of reducing bullying and abuse.