Migrant cleaners working at the Mercedes-Benz showroom in Colindale said no to poverty wages.

Low-paid, migrant workers at Mercedes Showroom in Colindale, London, won a 25% pay increase after returning a strike mandate alongside 150 cleaners, carers and concierge in eight workplaces across Greater London in June.

The United Voices of the World (UVW) union members, outsourced to commercial cleaning providers SBFM Limited, that clean the Mercedes-Benz luxury car showroom were due to announce simultaneous strike dates in coordination with eight other workplaces after their demands for a living wage were ignored.

The cleaners, UVW members, only received £10.42 an hour, the national minimum wage, below the recommended London Living Wage of £11.95. Meanwhile the luxury car giant reported a whopping net profit of €23.4 billion for 2021 while their cleaning contractors pay migrant workers pitiful wages. 

The workers situation had become unsustainable with inflation skyrocketing to around 13.4% (RPI). Fed up with being ignored, the workers voted YES to strike action to demand an affordable pay rise to £13 per hour.

The cleaners work in a Mercedes-Benz luxury car showroom, owned by the largest car dealership in the UK, the Sytner Group, and they are outsourced to commercial cleaning providers SBFM Limited. 

All these companies profit handsomely from this lucrative arrangement and they can easily afford the pay rise. Mercedes-Benz confirmed an astronomical net profit of €23.4 billion in 2021. The current assets for Mercedes-Benz Retail Group UK Limited (MBRE) stood at over £217,000,000, while the directors’ remuneration soared at £257,000, over 10 times the cleaners’ annual income. Synter Group, which recently bought the site, reported an 18% increase in revenue in 2021 to £5.4 billion, with a profit before tax of £178.1 million. 

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