Shift work: the campaigns to end outsourcing at UCL

Artwork by Christelle Troost

Matilda Singer takes a closer look at the campaign to end outsourcing at UCL, speaking with people badly affected by the practice, and campaigners closely involved in bringing about much-needed change.

In July 2017, Boyana Petrovich had her first major encounter at UCL: “my boss called me and said that UCL are outsourcing catering in Ramsay Hall and Ifor Evans. They need help.” 

“I went there and the whole process was heartbreaking...the anger, the disappointment that people expressed was phenomenal,” she recalls. “What I experienced there has shaped me”. 

Boyana is the London Regional Organiser for UNISON, the largest trade union in the UK, and one of the two major groups currently lobbying for change to working conditions on campus. Their campaign, #BringThemIn, targets outsourcing — a practice where organisations contract out major functions to specialized service providers —as the key problem. Around 900 staff members are currently employed by two companies — Sodexo for catering and cleaning, Axis for security — and UNISON are asking that these employees be brought in-house and given the same Terms & Conditions as those contracted directly by UCL. The campaign was launched in December 2018. Back then, “nobody was listening.”

Outsourcing as a phenomenon has been around for decades, but market liberalisation and a “race to the bottom” for cheap wages has seen an enormous growth in outsourced workers in recent years. In response to austerity and reduced grants from the government, British universities have been encouraging outsourcing since 2011 “as a means to drive efficiencies and ensure value for money”. In fact, FOIs filed by the Guardian reveal that spending on outsourced workers across 42 universities increased by almost 70% between 2010 and 2017. When Boyana joined the UNISON patch that covers UCL, her impression was that “[outsourcing] was part of the agenda”. When she tried to question the business case for this practice, “it was like I spoke alien”. 

The Justice for UCL Workers petition highlights no sick pay, bare minimum holiday, meagre pensions, zero hours contracts, and bullying and discrimination as the main discrepancies between working conditions of in-house and outsourced staff. In March, Sodexo attempted to introduce a biometric time management system for cleaners. This proposal was retracted after collective action, the cleaners writing that “the use of this technology to increase the monitoring of workers is excessive, discriminatory, and a violation of privacy.” 

Their letter went on to say that picking out only cleaning staff for this new system “constitutes a form of structural racism.” It certainly can’t be ignored that outsourced workers are more likely to be from BAME, working class, and migrant backgrounds, and as a result the setup disproportionately impacts already marginalised individuals. 

Hussein, a security guard who has worked at UCL for the last 14 years, explains: “I’m getting £10.55 for doing the same tasks, or even more, than someone else on £18 an hour. And the part that’s really shocking? We get 28 days holiday, they get 41.” Those 28 days don’t even include forced closure periods. Hussein turns around the pop-up calendar on his desk to show me the squares blocked out in colour — minus 7 for Christmas, minus 5 for Easter, minus 3 for other Bank Holidays. “I’m left with 13 days of annual leave in a whole year,” he says with precision. 

In his decade-and-a-half on campus, Hussein has certainly seen changes: “Axis have only been here for one year. Prior to that it was CIS. Before them, Gainsborough.” A 2006 law — TUPE — requires that workers be kept on when management changes. But from her professional experience, Boyana knows the situation is precarious and “if workers are not organised, little by little they can be signing away their rights.” 

I ask Hussein how things were when he first joined UCL: “You would just come in, you do your work.” He corrects himself: “It’s not you do your work, you do what they tell you.” 

“I used to do 7am-9pm Monday to Saturday. It was exhausting and you couldn’t say no. Because if you say no, you’re a troublemaker.” For him, “UNISON are the ones that changed things.” Becoming a rep has given him a platform, an affable confidence, and essential knowledge. At the beginning, “we didn’t even know what was in our contracts”. Now, he sits in the room with management to negotiate T&Cs for his fellow workers. “I’m not the person I used to be,” Hussein says with pride, and perhaps a tinge of sadness. “Today, I’m a different person. Now I can speak for myself.”

The other major group lobbying for change is IWGB (The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain). They’re a smaller, grassroots-led trade union that prioritises representing migrant workers and dismantling the gig economy. IWGB have been at UCL for about two years, and this October they launched a comparable campaign: #EndOutsourcingNow. Both unions organise demonstrations — last month UNISON took to the streets on the 17th, and IWGB on the 29th — but where the former engages in discussions with UCL management and is backed by MPs including Corbyn and Keir Starmer, the latter adopt a different strategy. 

The divergence is that IWGB members at UCL have now voted in favour of strike action, currently planned for 19th November. Some 300 workers were balloted during October, and over 98% of those that voted backed the strike. According to IWGB, it’ll be the biggest walkout of outsourced workers in UK higher education history. I ask Zayad, a security guard who works the night shift, if he’ll be striking on Tuesday. “100%. It’s something that I think we have to do.” 

“Most people think a security job is the easiest thing in the world, you come in and sit on the desk, come 7pm you go home. But security is more than that.” Zayad runs me through a handful of his responsibilities: manning reception, monitoring CCTV, dealing with staff, keeping keys, and patrolling buildings. “Without us, it would be very difficult to run things smoothly...so why are you outsourcing? Are we not important?” 

Then he breaks down an equally long list of problems in the security division: disorganisation, high turnover of management, ignoring feedback, lack of adequate training to complete their tasks. Last Autumn, there was a period “where every single month our pay was just missing,” Zayad recalls. 

I visit his building at 8pm, towards the beginning of a night shift, and already “you can see this place is really cold, even for someone healthy.” One of his colleagues came into work sick (because “if you don’t come to work, you don’t get paid”), then developed a chest infection and was forced to be off work for a month. “The more you look after your staff, the more they will look after you,” Zayad reasons of their request for improved working conditions. 

Three weeks ago, UCL announced that all outsourced workers will receive the same or equivalent pay and benefits as in-house staff by August 2021. It’s not a full concession, but a promise to lift T&Cs is no small feat. “We’re talking about people being able to have surgery, as opposed to choosing between an operation and poverty,” Boyana points out. The fact that the first wave of change is being introduced next month — from the 1st December holiday entitlement will be matched — suggests a certain level of commitment to Hussein. “If they were bluffing, they could have gone and said that they don’t have any money,” he reasons. 

Feeling is different over at IWGB, and they’re pushing on with strike action. Although UCL haven’t commented on their campaign and refuse to negotiate — a position that an unnamed union member describes as both “short-sighted” and “insulting” — Zayad agrees it’s no coincidence this announcement came in the middle of their ballot for strike action. “Of course it’s strategic. And it’s based on pressure — from the union, and from us.” 

Even for UNISON, there’s still plenty to negotiate. Having laid out what they see as the priorities, reps will meet with UCL once a month to monitor the progress of this promise, as well as to address any issues that arise during implementation. From Boyana’s perspective, “we’re working hard to build a relationship...if we label everyone an enemy, we’re not going to get anywhere.” 2021 seems both far-off and arbitrary to me, but the penny drops when Hussein explains that the contracts Sodexo and Axis hold with UCL are up in August 2021. “I’m sure that’s why they mentioned the date,” he says; “I have huge hopes that’s when we’ll be taken in-house”

And Bloomsbury isn’t the only campus where things are starting to shift: in 2017, cleaners at LSE led a campaign that saw them brought in-house; in 2018, SOAS put a stop to outsourcing; earlier this year, Goldsmiths, Birkbeck, and KCL all pledged to make the change. But with an income of 1.45 billion, UCL is one of the wealthiest universities in the UK. If all workers were brought in-house here, it could set a huge precedent for the rest of the country. End outsourcing, and “we’re all going to benefit, each and every one,” concludes Hussein. 

You can sign the #BringThemIn petition here and the #EndOutsourcingNow petition here. For more information, follow the campaigns on Twitter at @BringThemInUCL and @IWGBUCL. The UCL Justice for Workers student campaign can be found @UCLJ4W.