Yesterday I visited a group of cleaners at Massey University’s Wellington campus. (apologies for poor photo quality). Along with their colleagues on the campuses in Palmerston North and Albany they are employed by OCS Limited to do the cleaning. OCS took over the contract for cleaning a couple of months ago and are pushing through changes to their employment conditions that are just shocking.

OCS have decided to move the workers from largely full time jobs to new jobs that will guarantee them only 25 hours a week for the 31 weeks of peak university time, and no guarantee of hours for the remaining 21 weeks of the year. The way they are doing this is by making the workers redundant and offering them new contracts with the reduced hours.

This is unfair and unjust. It will equate to a 35% drop in wages. These people are not well paid. They get just above the minimum wage. Many of them travel from Porirua to Wellington to work. While OCS as the contractor has the responsibility for the contracts it is concerning that this is happening on a publicly funded university campus. I have written to Steve Maharey as Vice-Chancellor expressing my concern.

The Service and Food Workers Union are taking the redundancy proposal to court on Thursday, as OCS are offering no redundancy pay. Anyone interested in supporting the workers I understand that some of them hope to be at the High Court in Wellington tomorrow from 9am onwards.