Commercial Cleaners in London should have a higher wage

London is becoming an increasingly expensive city to live in.  Every year, those without a car have to face an increase in public transport fees.  It’s almost impossible to get on the property ladder, and keeping up with the rent as well as supporting yourself or a family is difficult when you’re on a minimum wage, which commercial cleaners are.

So, while prices are rising across London, why aren’t their wages?
In order to survive as a cleaning company in London, and have enough work going to support our cleaners, we need to offer the lowest rates to clean a property, yet we’re not succeeding in the public sector.  The private sector works better for us because private commercial clients pay more attention to hygiene than the public sector.

If a private company is not happy with the cleaning standard they switch cleaning companies.  However, on the public sector the contract between the two companies does not allow them to do this.  Even if they complain about the cleaning service, the same cleaning company could win the contract every year because they can afford to offer low hourly rates and paying their cleaners the minimum wage.

In a big city like London, commercial cleaners need more then the minimum wage.  We at FastKlean try to pay our cleaners a minimum of £6.50 per hour.  We try to keep them happy as well as be competitive against our rivals, which is no easy task, especially when the country is in a recession.

Recently, we’ve failed to win public tenders through lower rates alone.  We think that paying a minimum wage of £5.90 per hour to commercial cleaners is not enough.  Even though we pay our cleaners £6.50 per hour, we still think, for the amount of work they do, that it is not enough.

Commercial cleaners work early morning shifts and late evening shifts, before the companies open for business.  They work very hard, and to live a normal life they deserve at least a minimum of £7.00 per hour.  It is our hope that in the near future, London organisations will bring the issue of commercial cleaning wages to the attention of the local authorities.  That they will accept tenders at a higher rate and pay more attention to cleaning standards.

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