Who’s going to clean your city? Cleaners threaten to walk away over pay

Hundreds of office cleaners will throw down the gauntlet to cleaning employers today, telling them they can’t keep cleaning the city on poverty wages and shifts as short as two hours.

City cleaners will march to major cleaning employers in the CBD demanding they sign off on Australia’s first ever nation-wide collective agreement for cleaners.

The pay deal is the culmination of two years campaigning by cleaners to win longer shifts and a living wage, and involves 50 of Australia’s biggest cleaning companies.

Key elements include four hour minimum shifts and better pay for cleaners, who earn on average about $300 a week.

LHMU Cleaners Union State Secretary Jess Walsh said cleaning and hygiene standards have been falling in buildings all over the city because of short shifts and low pay.

“This industry has already lost thousands of experienced cleaners. Every year it loses forty percent of its workforce, because of short shifts and poverty wages,” said Ms Walsh.

“And cleaning contractors tell us they can’t find enough workers.

“So cleaners today are saying to employers ‘If you don’t sign off on this agreement, who’s going clean our city? Because we can’t stay in these jobs on $300 a week and two hour shifts.’

“Going into the city each day for only 2 hours work just isn’t worth it. That’s only $30 after you pay for parking or trams.

“If we want to keep our city buildings clean, cleaners need to have real part jobs that pay a living wage — not pocket money.”

Start time: 12.10 Outside Parliament House (Corner Bourke and Spring St)
Route: Spring St, down Collins St to City Square. (Stopping at 35, 55 & 101 Collins Streets).
Speakers: Bishop Hilton Deakin, Senator Gavin Marshall (Chair, Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee)