RMT press release issued today

MORE THAN 700 RMT Tube cleaners working for four private contractors are to be balloted for strike action to win the London living wage and decent working conditions, including 28 days' holiday, sick pay, decent pensions and travel facilities.

The union is also demanding an end to the barbaric practice of 'third-party sackings' in which cleaners can be dismissed, with no disciplinary hearing or right of appeal, at the behest parties other than the employer - a device used to get rid of union activists.

The ballot, of RMT members at ISS, ITS, ICS and GBM, is planned to open on May 29 and close on June 19.

"In 21st century London, when a living wage is reckoned to be at least £7.20 an hour, we have members who are being paid at rock-bottom minimum-wage rates little more than £5.50 an hour, and the abuse has to stop," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.

"The people who keep one of the world's most prestigious metro systems clean have the right to be paid a wage on which they can afford to live in the city.

"Sick pay, adequate holidays and a decent pension scheme are not optional luxuries, they are basic decent employment standards.

"Tube cleaners should be getting the same free travel that all other Tube workers get, but our members even have to fork out Tube fares from station to station while they are working and claim it back later, and that is just plain wrong.

"The previous mayor promised that cleaners on Metronet contracts would receive the London living wage as soon as they passed into TfL control, and if Boris Johnson wants to be seen as a mayor for all Londoners he will honour that pledge.

"Tubelines bosses know that paying cleaners the London living wage would barely dent their £1 million-a-week profits, and it is time they stopped hiding behind their contractors and lived up to their professed aim of 'treating others as we would like to be treated'.

"It is nonsense that cleaning contractors who make millions cannot afford to pay a living wage to the people who do some of the dirtiest and most difficult jobs on the Tube, and the time has come to start bringing cleaning back in-house," Bob Crow said.