Foreign Office cleaners claim fired after requesting Living Wage

After writing to complain about their substandard wage, a number of cleaners have been made redundant by a cleaning company in London.

Employees at Interserve, an outsourcing cleaning corporation which holds the cleaning contract for the Foreign Office (FCO), wrote to Sir Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, to ask for their salary of £ 7.05-an-hour to be raised to the National Living Wage of £9.15.

However, after it came to light that the workers had spoken out about their treatment, they were summoned to 14 individual meetings for “bringing the contract into disrepute”. Since then, three of the 14 have been made redundant, including the leader of the campaign Katy Rojas, according to The Independent.

As a union organiser from Ecuador, Rojas felt that it was necessary to make the government aware of how her and her fellow workers were dealt with. In the letter to Mr Hammond, Ms Rojas explained: “My country is called a Third World country but there they treat cleaners better than here. I don’t understand why we are treated like nothing.”