UCL management has re- neged on its promise to work towards implementing the London Living Wage for all staff. Some Refectory work- ers will face salary cuts of up to 25% now that Chartwells, the company to which the Refec- tory contracts are outsourced, has been given permission to restructure the contracts of its employees. People who have worked at UCL for up to ten years will face a pay cut of £2 per hour on top of the 20% an- nual cut to their headline wage.
UCL management re- cently announced that all re- maining in-house staff are to be outsourced while all cur- rent staff will face the same cuts as Refectory staff within two years, whilst keeping the same working conditions.
Greg Brown, member of the London Living Wage Cam- paign, commented: ‘This is an absolute disgrace and gives lie to the myth that Malcolm Grant and UCL management have ever had the concerns of anyone but themselves at heart. While they give with one hand, they take three times more with the other.
UCL has claimed that staff are being outsourced for efficiency reasons. However the Living Wage Campaign believes it would be more ef- ficient to bring them back in house and claims that the ul- terior motive of UCL man- agement is to suppress union activity in the university and keep wages down. Protestors stormed the Refectory at lunch- time on Friday 18 March to raise awareness of these issues.