“We are demanding a fair wage, and fair sick pay, because we can’t make ends meet.”

Cleaners at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) – a global leader in art and design – are paid just £11.75 an hour, a poverty wage mere pennies above the minimum wage. They get no company sick pay and lose 100% of their pay for the first three days of sickness, only getting £23.35 a day after that.

These workers, mostly migrants from Latin America and members of United Voices of the World (UVW), are demanding £14.50 an hour, full sick pay from day one and an extra week of annual leave to bring them in line with directly employed workers of the museum.

The cleaners work tirelessly to ensure the museum’s world-famous collections are displayed in pristine spaces, yet they are denied the basic dignity of decent wages and working conditions.

The V&A prides itself on being a progressive institution. But the truth is they allow their cleaners, who are outsourced to cleaning contractor Total Support Services (TSS), not even as second class, but third class. This is because they get the worst basic pay and  benefits compared to any other group of workers in the museums.

This injustice is happening hot on the heels of multiple rounds of strike action by the security guards at the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the V&A, also member of
UVW union, over pay and benefits.

Outsourced museum workers across London are standing up and saying: enough is enough! 

If the museum and TSS refuse to negotiate, UVW cleaner members at the V&A will be balloted for strike action.