Landmark case over pay and conditions for university support staff

A union is launching a legal challenge over the rights of 75 university support staff to negotiate their pay and conditions, in a landmark case that could improve rights for outsourced workers.

The receptionists, security officers, postroom staff and porters working at the University of London are employed through the facilities management company Cordant Security, but are seeking the right to agree their pay and conditions directly with the university.

Papers for the case, led by gig economy union the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, and the Good Law Project, devised by the barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, are being filed at the central arbitration committee on Tuesday.

The case argues that denying the workers the right to collectively bargain with their “de facto employer” is a breach of article 11 of the European convention on human rights concerning joining trade unions and having them protect their interests.

If successful, the case could potentially open the door for thousands of outsourced workers across the UK to negotiate with the company that ultimately benefits from their labour. The union said that if it established the precedent of a joint employer for the purposes of collective bargaining, this could potentially be applied to people employed via agencies, such as those working in the Sports Direct warehouse.

The IWGB general secretary, Jason Moyer Lee, said: “When it comes to the most important elements of pay and terms and conditions for the outsourced workers, it is the University of London and not Cordant which calls the shots.

“In order for these workers’ collective bargaining and human rights to mean anything, we need to be able to negotiate directly with the university, not the glorified middleman.”

A University of London spokesperson said: “The university does not employ any of these workers and does not accept that the relevant legislation recognises the concept of joint employment. We have therefore not agreed to the IWGB’s request for recognition.”

The spokesperson added that the university had begun a review of the performance of its contracted facilities management services, which would cover pay, conditions and benefits.The court case is the latest in a series of battles over better employment rights and pay between outsourced workers, particularly cleaning staff, and universities and other big institutions including hospitals.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the practice of using outsourced workers hit those in the lowest-paid sectors the hardest.

“Outsourcing’s a cheap trick used by bad bosses to dodge their basic responsibilities to workers. They’re trying to hammer down people’s pay and get an unfair advantage,” O’Grady said. “Other European countries have a sensible way of dealing with this. Unions and businesses negotiate fair pay rates for the whole sector, which means outsourcing can’t drive down pay and conditions.”

This article was amended on 21 November 2017. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to agency workers, rather than outsourced workers. We were also incorrect when we said the case was being launched by the staff; it is being brought by the union.