Camden caterers demand the Living Wage, March 2015, photo Reel News

Camden caterers demand the Living Wage, March 2015, photo Reel News   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

School kitchen workers in Camden win £9.15 an hour

Hugo Pierre, Camden Unison schools convenor

After an 18-month long campaign, school kitchen workers in the London borough of Camden have won the London Living Wage – to be paid from September 2015.

This victory comes after unanimous votes for industrial action forced management to negotiate – without a single strike day becoming necessary.

The Camden Unison branch started the campaign to push the council and the contractor Caterlink to introduce the London Living Wage. The school trade union stewards and conveners took the campaign into all the school kitchens throughout the borough and their first priority was to increase the union membership and to recruit a group who were prepared to act as stewards and organisers of the campaign.

Camden is a Labour council. In 2011 it agreed to become a London Living Wage employer, but it took the decision to exclude schools as well as just applying it to new contracts.

The Caterlink contract was issued in 2010, just before the council’s decision.

Determined campaign

However, the force of the campaign took it by surprise. From the off, the union members were prepared to lobby councillors to force them to change their position.

Annie-Rose Barnes, one of the first stewards, said:

“When I started campaigning amongst staff there was a bit of a lack of confidence that the union could do anything. But as the union started to explain our rights and showed that we hadn’t been paid for up to five days a year and got back pay that was docked for people not working those five days, it lifted everyone’s confidence”.

We continued to lobby the council and in November the first cracks in the council appeared as it gave a commitment to pay the London Living wage from 1st April 2016 – which was in 15 months time! But this spurred on the stewards to keep campaigning.

Although the stewards had a heavy working day, they made plans for a mass meeting to agree a plan for strike action if the employer and the council didn’t introduce the London Living wage sooner.

Digging through the council’s annual accounts we were able to show that even with deep cuts over the previous four years to the schools department budget alone, the council had saved £4 million on top.
This was 10 times the amount the council needed to pay the increase from £6.60 an hour to £9.15.

Media coverage

A joint lobby in March of the full council, along with care workers and ‘pots and pans’, caught the local press’s attention. The journalist uncovered the mansion of the company owner in leafy Berkshire. The splash in the Camden New Journal over three weeks was a boost to the campaign.

When the stewards launched the ballot, there was great enthusiasm for a strike. Meetings were held in individual school kitchens. In each one there was a 100% yes vote.

Last week on Friday the council confirmed the outcome of its discussions with Caterlink; it announced to us that the London Living Wage would be introduced from 1st September this year.

A mass meeting of Unison members agreed that their campaign had been successful and that it was a major victory for a group of staff who hadn’t even been in the union 12 months before; close to 50% of them are now union members and they have five stewards to take on their management.

Annie-Rose said:
“School meals work is really hard with a lot of heavy lifting and working in hot conditions. You’re on your feet all day long and exhausted at the end of the day. We really care about the food we produce for our kids.
We more than deserve the London Living Wage. But being in the union and campaigning for our rights is probably even more important. The company have tried to stop us from knowing our rights but we know better now through this brilliant campaign”.


This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 16 June 2015 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.