The Cleaners of London

[Martinus]

It's about time that we ditched the old-fashioned notion that labour should be exchanged for wages. 

They are gaining valuable experience in this sector at a very prestigious location...

This is going to look great on their cvs.

[Martinus]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

[The Brain]

Didn't read but seems to me that throwing shit on the customer isn't necessarily awesome. "I have a problem with my employer - I'm gonna blame the customer!" sorry just no.

It is more complex but they engage in purely rational economic behaviour.

The cleaners have no market power vs Saatchi or their agency; and their agency has very little market power vs Saatchi. The only actor(s) that can have some market power vs Saatchi in this set up are customers. So putting pressure on them is the only sensible solution in this situation.

This is free market in action.

You protect your customers as much as legally possible, and you definitely do it in B2B.

[Martinus]

Please read the article and the thread. Not interested in discussing this with someone who has no idea about the issue.

[The Brain]

OK I've read it, I stand by everything I've said (except the didn't read part). I once worked for years at a customer, and there's just NO WAY IN HELL that I would have brought the customer into any conflict between me and my employer over wages. You don't let internal shit spill onto the customer. EVER. But I guess customer focus isn't a thing in the cleaning sector.

[Agelastus]

[Now, a lawyer may step in here and call part of the following "Bollocks". I can only speak from my experience with a voluntary liquidation and from information freely available online.]

So we're supposed to cheer them for blackmailing Saatchi into paying money and making guarantees they had no legal obligation to make. And then publicising the fact.

The article is so slanted it stinks.

COC, of course, are certainly shits for lying to the Cleaners.

Saatchi says it had received repeated assurances from COC that the wages would be paid, even as the company was beginning the process of voluntary liquidation. Kellie Stevens, who signs herself in correspondence as a director of COC, declined to comment. Saatchi says once it understood the situation, Cheshunt-Group Cleaning Services took on the role of subcontractors on 13 November and began to pay the cleaners weekly. However, neither Saatchi not Cheshunt accepted liability for the £40,000 of unpaid wages.

Of course not - Saatchi have already paid COC (or will be paying the insolvency specialist) for the services of the cleaners. Cheshunt's owes nothing if there's no continuity of employment.

Since then, Gonzalez-Merello and her fellow barrister John Samson, working pro bono, have been guiding the Saatchi cleaners through the minefield of employment legislation. "The cleaners have no resources, no understanding of the system and without money and help, they can do nothing," says Gonzalez-Merello. "New government procedures mean that getting a claim off the ground is almost impossible, particularly for foreign nationals with little or no English. The fees for starting a claim are huge, the process is almost impenetrable, even for experts, and the law is complicated. It's exploitation of the very weakest. This happens again and again. In many instances, cleaners walk away with nothing because what else can they do?"

So, making a phone call (if the insolvency specialist hasn't done his job) and helping them fill in a form is "guiding them through the minefield". Right...

It's trivially simple to find out who the insolvency specialists are (it only took me 10 minutes this morning because although the Government advises you to contact Companies House that bit of information is not available on their website; a google search for "Consolidated Office Cleaning insolvency specialist" brought up the Gazette notice and solved that.)

Incidentally, the Insolvency Specialists are B & C Associates, the creditors meeting is on the 10th December, COC has never filed a full set of accounts with Companies House (they missed the deadline of 30th March 2014 for their first) and they're also late with the Return to Companies House that was due in July 2014.

Employees owed wages are on the preferred creditors list in an insolvency but going through the process of attending meetings and making claims is long winded and expensive - which is why the government pays your wages up to a certain limit and takes over your claim against the company (the government also being a preferred creditor and thus most likely to get its money back.)

Should you be owed more money than the weekly limit then you still have to claim against the company. But the weekly limit is set at around 50 hours of minimum wage work so the cleaners are most likely to get all or the majority of their money that way.

The method for starting a claim for unpaid wages from the government has not changed since I went through the process in 2006 (I checked this morning.) In fact, if an official insolvency specialist has been retained the process should be automatic (it's one of the Specialist's duties, to send out the form to all relevant parties.)

The form itself may, of course, have changed and the cleaners will certainly need help completing it.

On 13 November, Saatchi paid each cleaner 30% of what they were owed and described this as a gift. The company subsequently said it was an interest-free loan. For weeks, Gonzalez-Merello and Samson have fought to persuade Saatchi to accept liability for the lost wages. As a result of their efforts, last Friday, a deal began to take shape.

The Saatchi 35 will have their contracts taken over by Cheshunt-Group Cleaning Services. Saatchi has agreed to indemnify the unpaid wages. In addition, under employment law, continuity of employment will be maintained that keeps redundancy rights for the cleaners intact. Saatchi has also "written off" the 30% payment. Magnus Djaba, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi London, says: "Though there is no legal reason for us to pay the wages owed to these cleaners, we felt a moral responsibility towards these people, many of whom have been contracted to clean our offices for many years."

So if the deal includes continuity of employment Saatchi again has no responsibility for the wages; continuity of employment means that the liability for unpaid wages passes to the new employer. Cheshunt pays and (presumably) can make a claim against the assets of COC for the money in question. I don't know what level of creditor (preferred, secured or unsecured) they'd be in this case.

Saatchi pays Cheshunt the contracted amount from the 13th November.

Now, the situation should have been resolved more quickly. If COC had been honest with their employees and clients Cheshunt could have made an interest free loan against future wages before the situation spiralled out of control. But again, that's COCs fault, not Saatchi's or Cheshunt's. Saatchi, in fact, seem to have done all that can be reasonably expected about the situation. Yet, of course, it's their name that "sells" the article...

[Agelastus]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Years and years ago...it really got going under Blair's Labour.

[Warspite]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Yes, 'internships'. I was lucky - mine turned into a job and was in a city where I could live at home.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Yes, 'internships'. I was lucky - mine turned into a job and was in a city where I could live at home.

My eldest has also just gone through this process and now has a "proper" job. Similarly a niece went through the process a few years back and now has a slightly glittery career.

I think that is the standard result if one is lucky enough to have a supportive family, but for those without that it is very problematic.

[Warspite]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Yes, 'internships'. I was lucky - mine turned into a job and was in a city where I could live at home.

My eldest has also just gone through this process and now has a "proper" job. Similarly a niece went through the process a few years back and now has a slightly glittery career.

I think that is the standard result if one is lucky enough to have a supportive family, but for those without that it is very problematic.

It's hugely problematic, and what shocks me is how quickly supposedly 'progressive' types are to use internships for their own ends - more than once I've been the only person complaining about my firm's overreliance on unpaid 21-year-olds to a management board stuffed with 50 year olds who got a paying job straight out of university and have paid off the mortgages on their homes. It is literally impossible for them to relate to the plight of a youngster out of education paying £800 a month for rent plus bills and not even being recompensed for their labour as anything other than an 'opportunity'.

[Josquius]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Its been in Britain for years.
Its a way the system keeps the lower classes in their place- it lets them go to university and get a degree but due to a lack of money, bars most of them from doing the necessary internships to buy  a job.
Inability to afford to do such a thing is what kept me unemployed for a year.

[CountDeMoney]

This is a part of a broader problem, that is quite widespread in Poland as well - i.e. companies outsourcing what used to be internal employees to external service providers.

Hey, worked for my company. 

But now I get plenty of quality time with Mom, and you just can't put a share price on that.

[Ed Anger]

You can make Tater Tot casserole together.

[CountDeMoney]

a voluntary liquidation

Heh.  Cute.

[Martinus]

Speaking of working for no wages, has the plague of unpaid "work experience" for young employees reached the UK yet?

Yes, 'internships'. I was lucky - mine turned into a job and was in a city where I could live at home.

My eldest has also just gone through this process and now has a "proper" job. Similarly a niece went through the process a few years back and now has a slightly glittery career.

I think that is the standard result if one is lucky enough to have a supportive family, but for those without that it is very problematic.

Yes, or in other words, it perpetuates class divisions and stiffles social mobility like hell.