FEATURE
YOU’RE NOT INVISIBLE
Following the announcement of a new campaign to promote good working conditions in the industry from a ‘Cleaning Taskforce’ set up by the European Human Rights Commission, we spoke to Phil Smith, Corporate Relationship Director at Facilicom and member of the taskforce, to find out just what this campaign is all about.
Midway through last year, the European Human Rights Commission (EHRC) produced a report looking into the treatment of cleaning operatives called ‘The Invisible Workforce’ and ever since then, a ‘Cleaning Taskforce’ has been working hard to improve conditions for our much-maligned frontline cleaners.
One of the key contributors to this Taskforce has been Facilicom UK who, particularly thanks to their involvement with the Living Wage Foundation, have been very vocal in their support for better treatment of the so-called ‘lower level’ staff members.
Eager to find out more about the work that the Commission and the Taskforce has been doing in the interim 18 months since the report was published, we caught up with Phil Smith, Corporate Relationship Director at Facilicom and member of the Cleaning Taskforce to find out whether things are on the up.
Tomorrow’s Cleaning: So Phil, can you tell us a bit about the work that the Cleaning Taskforce has been doing?
Phil Smith (PS): The output that’s most recently hit the press is the culmination of about a year and a half’s worth of behind the scenes work that the commission has been doing. It was towards the middle of last year, after a great deal of research from the EHRC where they spoke to a broad church of people associated with the cleaning industry and produced the Invisible Workforce report. This recognised that there were many, many great organisations out there that are delivering best practice, but it also highlighted some fairly damning examples of poor
30 | Tomorrow’s Cleaning December 2015
practice, and made people realise that we have a huge workforce out there operating in our sector and some of them are being very badly treated. And that extends into things like improper sick pay, no facilities in the workplace, not being paid holidays – the things that in the ‘white collar’ sector, we take for granted.
The taskforce has a fairly indirect role to play because ultimately it’s not a mandatory process that we’re suggesting. It’s not something that companies have to adopt. It’s not something that’s supported by legislation other than correct employment practices, but this was more a campaign to raise awareness and I suppose almost prick the conscience of companies to do the right thing and employ best practice.
The fundamental heart of what we’ve been doing is making people aware of the fact that, as somebody said to me years ago, if the world didn’t have cleaners it would grind to a halt and people would die. I think it’s a case of elevating the respect that we have for people that perform those duties because they are almost like an emergency service, and if we didn’t have cleaners our world would be a very different place.
TC: Facilicom is very involved in the Taskforce and the work that the EHRC has been doing over the past 18 months to two years. What has its role been specifically?
PS: I was involved in two of the working groups for the taskforce. The first of which was responsible procurement, and the taskforce was basically looking at practices within the procurement sector, which may
The fundamental heart of what we’ve
been doing is making people aware of the fact that, if the world
didn’t have cleaners it would grind to a halt and people would die.
contribute towards cutting of corners within the cleaning service providers that could ultimately lead to the wrong delivery of normal employment rights – not having paid holidays, sick leave, etc – or it could in fact lead to unrealistic productivity expectations being placed upon the workforce.
I also gave input from that side from Facilicom’s perspective on what we considered to be poor procurement practices that could ultimately lead to those kind of situations occurring, specifically the famous and most economically advantageous tender solution that the public sector seems to push forward, which we all know within the industry is a race to the cheapest price.
But the most important one and something where I think Facilicom has been able to give significant input and is also a leader within the industry is
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