Talk - Listen - Collectivise

I want to tell you more. The other conversations I had, the follow-ups, the mystery chef, the Polish supervisor who felt so humiliated by her work that she'd stopped telling her friends and family back home what she was doing, still cleaning, still below the London Living Wage, five years on..

More about sitting alone in the canteen and withdrawing, feeling the silence and isolation and being too exhausted to speak.

Falling asleep out with friends at pub tables. Turbo coffee in the morning followed by too much sugar....How hand cream is vital, how you can never change any bedsheets or clean anything at home without having flashbacks of what you've been doing over a dozen times a day and slipping into automatic...getting thin..getting out of touch with news..unable to read...sleeping on the tube...backache....dreaming about getting out of this...

I know how to organise. But it's difficult. There are some easy aspects to remember though, for all of you reading this and wanting to change your situation at work.

Organising is about relationships. Organising is about building trust. Organising requires patience and perseverance. Get used to failure. But prepare for success. And the need for movement-building and solidarity outside the workplace.

But above all, the first steps are this:

Talk – You need to talk to people. You need to break the ice, break the isolation. There is a misguided view that we can organise through social media. Social media is an amplifier rather than an instigator. Most of us, as we know, are not on twitter! It's a privileged medium for those with smartphones and the time to look at them. I know we don't when we're rushing all over rooms, often with no reception or wifi. To be 'plugged in' to that speed-network, you need the time and tools to scan it, work it and benefit from it. You can strike up a conversation at reception (carefully), in the kitchen, on break, in the smoking area, in the locker room, in the lift. Anywhere you have time to see each other. Share a tea. Tea is one of the greatest social lubricants of all time! Revolutions are plotted over cuppas...

Listen – This is the big one. The most important part of any organising. After striking up conversations, we need to listen to what people have to say. It's common to want to vent, to go on and fill silence, but, we need to hear from people. We know it's rare for us to really share our feelings and our ideas about work and whether we can change our situation. But that process starts with hearing each other out. How are we doing?....And remember what people tell you, remember it because you'll hear the same issues from many different people and we need to recognise and reflect what we've got in common.

Collectivise – Nine times out of ten if you're feeling it, someone else is too. If it's your problem, it's a shared problem. The same problems repeat themselves, because they are un-addressed, because they are products of exploitation and oppressive behaviour, and unresolved they soon become systemic and structural and cultural. Like bullying, stress, pressure, low pay, self-cut as well as management cut breaks, unpaid overtime. These unfair conditions become normalised. 'That's just how it is' we tell ourselves and the intensity of our work exhausts and isolates us. 'It'll never change' we think.

But it can. And it does (remember New York). Especially when we work for some of the wealthiest, most profitable and constant companies in the world. They need us. Remember that. We make their money. We make the operation tick over. It's common for people to focus on their own individual issues and problems because our dominant culture teaches us we're alone. Mass individualism means we've lost the ability to think and act and take decisions collectively. We need to re-learn collective action but it is natural, co-operation is the cornerstone of society, and contrary to Thatcher's assertion that there is no such thing as society, only the individual, we are social. Take a problem it, share it. Got an individual grievance? Collectivise it. See and feel that you're in it together. Act together. Support each other. Stick together. That's a union.

So, as I keep on cleaning, agitating, and organising (: I want to give this space over to other people, working for the same hotel, as well as in the same hotel chain, in Housekeeping as well as other departments to take up their voice.

This 'aint my last word. I'm stepping back to let my colleagues step in. Stay with us. We're stepping it up....

Omnishambles

So who is it? Who have I been working for?

Well, the company is called Omni Facilities Management. This is a contract cleaning company, registered in the UK, currently operating across 150 hotels in the UK and Singapore. Omni have a presence in some of London's top hotels including global powerhouses like Hilton.

Established in 1980, it's been running for 36 years. Last year's gross profits were £4,076,131. The company says it employs 4000 people – over 2000 of those on direct contracts. Employment would suggest a relationship of mutual obligation, in fact for many the relationship is one of being employed on a virtually zero hours contract, as in my case, a four hour per week contract. I'm guaranteed just £26* wages by Omni per week. 

But this isn't the only problematic part of the contract. There is an unlawful clause (depicted below) which states that the first two weeks of work are 'training' and are unpaid if an employee leaves before 3 months are up. This means that hundreds of pounds of wages which are owed to workers, are unpaid. Workers are not getting the minimum wage for the hours they've worked – a violation of the law.

 The rogue clause - and below, typed in:

Training: The first 2 weeks of your employment are dedicated and designated ‘Training weeks’ as or Client hotels require trained team members. Payment for this training will be paid when you leave our employment however, should you voluntarily leave within the first 12 weeks, the company reserves the right to charge you the equivalent cost of providing this transferable, job specific training. The company may, within your first pay cycle, at its discretion pay you a salary advance subject to certain qualifying criteria and based on assessed competence and capability. Any advance will be deducted from your subsequent salary.

I pointed this out to Omni and they told me I had signed the contract and had therefore consented to carrying out unpaid work for the company, despite cleaning to a good standard, carrying out spring cleans and meeting my quota of rooms per day.

Given that the staff turnover in Housekeeping Departments is about 50% - I.e half of all new starters leave within a few months, and taking into account those who take the job over a summer period and are unable to fulfil the three month period imposed by Omni - there could be thousands of workers out there who are owed substantial amounts of cash by this company.

Most Housekeeping Department workers do not speak English as a first language, with many unable to speak English at all. They are not given the Employee Handbook or their contract in their first language, which means they often don't know what they've signed and what it means for their wages and conditions. Most are likely to accept the explanation given by the company as to why they will not be paid or have not been paid for work they have done, as part of this 'training period'.

Agencies taking over from the Omni contract also end up taking on this liability, meaning they could be subject to claims by workers who have been shafted by Omni but will now need to be paid out by their new agency.

Omni Facilities have questions to answer over their contractual clause which blatantly violates employment law. You work – you get paid, End Of. A two week 'training period' can see the company pocketing some £480 per worker for two five-day weeks of labour.

They justify this as the cost of providing the training, This 'training' consists of cleaning rooms with and alongside experienced workers who lead by example, but they don't get any extra pay for providing this 'training'. Their load is just a little bit lighter. The training also consists of just 3 days of shadowing, so the two week period is also questionable.

                                                 What I have to do

Looking through Omni's website, they try to present themselves as a 'good corporate citizen' as all these Housekeeping agencies do, sponsoring vocational training and pledging to 'revolutionise hotel housekeeping...through leading software'. 

What will revolutionise this industry and this sector, isn't going to be new software, it'll be seeing the back of Omni and other agencies whose sole purpose is to profit from ever higher 'productivity' quotas (making mostly women migrant workers work harder and faster, faster and harder, at a great cost to their physical and mental and health and well being). Our labour is their grist. They do not add any value themselves to business, we are the business, and we do it all for minimum wage – and up to two weeks for free! Whilst some of the most profitable companies in the world wash their hands of us.

Hotels should guarantee a living wage, as well as stable and decent terms and conditions by employing us directly and eliminating this strata of competitive companies tendering on how much more labour they can squeeze out of us - an ever more desperate workforce. 

Agencies are supposed to exist only to cover and peaks and troughs in labour supply, not to keep us all on permanent zero hours contracts and constant precarity.

But I'm not looking for anyone to save me.

Omni are a shambles. But they are not alone in the shark pool. We know public opinion is on our side about the need for highly profitable companies to pay the living wage and ensure fair, humane and healthy conditions for all workers. 

The question is, when will the the hotel chains wake up and smell the R2, and clean up this industry? The answer is when we, self organised and unionised, force them to.

* Originally this figure was £24 per week. The correct figure based on the Minimum Wage is actually £26. This is down to author error. Apologies for any confusion caused.

Galina

I'm starting to keep notes. On who I talk to, on their behaviour. Do they stand up to management? Are they popular? How long have they been here? 

There's one woman I've warmed to instantly. She's Bulgarian and her name is Galina.* A tiny mother of two, 36 but looking older; she's got large green eyes, olive skin, and could be Roma. She wears little dangly gold earrings, dark eye makeup and crimson lipstick. She smiles all the time. Genuinely. Some of her teeth are missing and she's vague about her past, but she throws herself into the work, with a swagger almost.

I like her because she stops to talk when we pass in the corridor, or if we bump into eachother on a dash to the pantry for more linen. We swap fatigue sighs and shaking heads over the empty cupboards, the inevitable Sunday deluge of D N Ds (Do Not Disturbs) where you push your trolley from closed door to closed door to closed door....

                                                No linen, a common sight...

Galina has some kind of rift with Elena, the pretty spiteful supervisor from Lithuania. A couple of mornings now I've seen Galina shout, in Bulgarian and broken English, at the icey boss squabbling over baskets of tea gear, bathroom tat and spare dusters over the counter.

“Hey, HEY”, she's bellowed to Elena and they've tustled over the tray. “I don't speak English, why you speak me in English?” Shouts Galina. Elena will hold back the tray and look at her wearily and disdainfully. Galina will become animated, eyebrows all over the show, and reach over to snatch the tray.

“STOP it”, Elena will say like an icepick, holding it firm.

“Hah? Hah? Yyeeeeah, Yyeeah”, Galina will say sneeringly, tauntingly, returning the waves of disgust that could almost be lapping around them right now.

Elena will eventually give over the tray, but not before raising her hand and pointing hard on Galina. “The last time, this is the last time”, she will say in an attempt to rescue her authority but, the girls have all seen it, and half of us have loved it; Galina's resistance, to the pettyness, to the humourlessness, of all of this.

I back up Galina by standing beside her and fixing Elena with a look of, “That's abusive”, but she barely notices. The term 'face like a slapped arse' fits her well.

I wish I could speak Bulgarian.

Over lunch we try and understand each other, mostly empathising over how much we dislike Elena, saying her name, wrinkling our faces and giving each other the thumbs down.

“We need a Union”

She furrows her brow.

I put my hands together, and clasp my fingers over my knuckles.

“Union?”

It's hard to explain it.

“Us”, I say, pointing to me and her and around the sullen canteen. “Us, together”. I make a fist.

She smiles and shrugs and laughs warmly.

She'd be one to get it I'm sure. We eat, separately smiling together.

Back in the rooms it's just non-stop yo-yo-ing in and out. I almost always forget something and keep clicking in and out, in and out. My knuckles are getting sore from reaching into my pockets for the card key, reaching deep into duvets and pillows, the stiff cotton rubbing on my hands, worn by the chemicals and the towel folding and just the constant motion.

A cut I thought had healed on my finger springs a leak and I'm terrified of getting blood on the perfect white sheets. I try and continue with toilet paper wrapped around the wound but it's too risky. I look for a plaster in the pantry, call on the supervisor, and when noone shows up after 10 minutes I eventually trapse all the way down to the office, 4 floors, and all the while thinking how this is eating into my allotted cleaning time.

I go through a few plasters this day, a combination of sweating in the gloves when I wash up cups and glasses, as well as the dripping sponges and shower water, and just the constant flurry and contact of my hands.

In the changing room at home time, I'm one of the last. I've tried to strike up conversations here but it's not easy. People are partially clothed. Chatting in your undies and over your steaming sweaty shoes and clammy socks isn't something I feel that comfortable with. But the four Romanian room attendants that swing in noisily, pay no mind to my mousey modesty and shed their grey polyester uniforms to reveal really foxy, lacy, super-sexy underwear. Like, lingerie catalogue sexy. I can't help but look. I know I'm blushing. I kind of treat this job as a workout and wear sports underwear. These women, they're made up and sassy and laughing amongst themselves. They're barely aware of me shyly looking over. To me they're a manifestation of resistance to the drudge; joy and resistance to all the dirt and monotony. Under the grey there's a riot and they know it.

I want to talk to them but I know zero Romanian.

I get a text.

“Talk to Jola, the supervisor, she'll be in in a moment”.

It's from Grzegorz, the chef....

*All names are changed for protection

Wars

I get Wanda's number and she takes mine. We talk some more, confiding in eachother now, about love and men and how she is absolutely done with them, no more, never, ever again. She can't and doesn't believe in love anymore. Her eyes grow wide and wet. You can get burned forever can't you? 

I listen out through another cigarette.

There's nothing worse than violence at home. Up close. Violence from a partner or a parent or all of it. Violence in a place you can't escape from. Because you're too young. Because you're too in love. Because you're too poor. Because you have nowhere else to go. The deep shattering of trust and with it all hope and confidence. Because no safe space means no safe space. Where can you go? When home is hell. And even when you leave, violence leaves its' trace. It's remembered in the body; buried, but staying, latent and inflamed again with the flex of instincts which fear have got to,  triggered by the most banal of encounters. 

People leave their mark. 

Wanda didn't go into detail. But I'm used to recognising trauma. The way people talk with enhanced animation, the wide eyes, the re-live, the still undigested shock rising through the body and the voice. 

I've seen it in women and I've seen it in men who had their lives destroyed - or almost destroyed - by other men, because they fought back, because they refused to accept injustices. They stood up and felt the full force of a company, or the police, or an army, and a state, and often all of it hurricained into one, long, nightmare. But if you saw them, on a building site, or in their homes making a tea, or in the pub, you'd never know they were at war. Likewise the woman cleaning your room, walking past you pushing an overstacked laundry trolly, or picking up biscuit wrappers in a chandeleir-lit atrium. Soldier.

Wanda hadn't just gone through hell in home and home in hell, but also another terrible experience, a different form of war on her. One to do with European border regimes and the people who can exploit them and profit from them. And they have guns. One to do with her poverty and precarity. A deal she'd entered into. She started shaking and shouting when she told me.

Go Home - continued

 
             No, it's really nothing like this...

The manager is livid.

'AM I SHOUTING?' she says in a raised, pointed voice.

'ISTHISABUSIVEBEHAVIOUR?' She's directing her comments, not towards me, but to the girl next to me. The girl, from Sri Lanka and probably one of the most precarious workers in the whole place, looks to me and then to the boss. She pauses. 'No ma'am you are not shouting', she says as if this is the most obvious thing in the world.

I'm seething. Trying to pit her against me, intimidating her to intimidate me, deny that this whole abusive power relationship is playing out before our eyes.

Leva the supervisor turns to me and says bluntly, 'You need to change your attitude' and turns away.

'No, YOU need to change your attitude' I snap back.

I stand there with my elbows on the sign-in counter glowering at her back.

She turns around in disbelief. The manager starts shouting again.

Leva softens slightly and cutting through the noise, says, 'Look, I had to do your rooms, I had to follow the girls around all of the day asking who could do extra rooms, and it was hard for us'.

'So there's no rooms for me today?' I say, swallowing nervously.

'No, there's no rooms for you', says Leva in a gentler tone.

'So..... I should just go now?'

'Yes',

'And come back tomorrow?'

'Yes, if you want to...... Do you want to come back?'

Fucking hate this place and I dread coming here.

'I do yes, I want to work'.

'So we'll see you tomorrow'.

I nod, semi-earnestly, and walk back to the locker room. It's in bad shape. The lavs are always missing toilet paper, and the doors don't shut properly. Notices on the walls above the sinks say 'PLEASE RESPECT YOUR COLLEAGUES AND DO NOT WASH YOUR FEET IN THE SINK'.

I still don't have a locker or a pass, so my stuff just sits in a pile. I get changed and put on my rucksack and decide to come back to the office to apologise.

The Manager is sitting primly above paperwork.

'Look, I'm sorry', I say.

'This didn't happen', she snaps without looking at me. 'Forget it'.

I'm seven hours free but seven hours down on my pay. I won't get paid for coming in today – or will I?

I see Wanda outside having a smoke at the staff exit. I've taken up smoking since I started here, to get time with people. Smoking areas are ideal for talking to people because you've got the time it takes to roll or spark a cigarette and smoke it to strike up a conversation. You've got a reason to be there. It's natural to chat. Every other space is either full of people getting dressed or people in the lift, people struggling to eat before they have to be back out on the floor, or just getting out of the hotel fast. Here, at the exit, there are smokey pauses.

I retell Wanda the story and how I lost my cool with the bosses.

“I used to work at the (X) in Euston”, she tells me. “There, they treated me badly. There was a supervisor there who would order me around, and bark at me as if I were a dog. But, as I was raised to stand up for myself but to never shout and to keep dignified, I told her, calmly and clearly: 'Listen, you do not speak to me like that. You do not disrespect me in this way and I will not allow it.' And you know, I complained about her and they did listen to me and I ended up getting transferred here. I won't take any crap of anyone. I know my rights”.

I take a short drag on my rollie and smile straight at her. Have I met a potential activist here?

Go Home

I'd put in for four days off in the 'off' book. Had some business to take care of in the North. I asked one of the office managers if it would be ok, and he said it would be, slightly hurriedly and dismissively, but, he assured me it would be ok, so I thought it would be ok.

It wasn't easy, what happened in the North, and I won't go into it all here. But I arrived back in work, Sunday morning, tired and emotional and sort of broken inside. Hauling my self as you do when your body's like a dead weight, into the sad canteen, I sat down and confided in one of my new Polish friends. 

She's a divorcee and mother of one in her early 40s; a veteran of the European hotel industry. Thin and shrewd with large, attentive eyes, she hears me out and then shakes her head sympathetically. 'It's better' she says, 'Trust me. You'll have peace, holy peace'. I nod and sip my tea tearfully. 

                                                      Would this motivate you?...

When I get downstairs to the basement I'm told 'They're looking for you'. 'They' meaning the Management.

'Where were you on Wednesday?', says the main office manager, an Indian woman in her late 40s who I've never seen smile.

She barely looks up from her paperwork. One of the supervisors, Leva from Latvia, is standing beside her staring directly at me, wide-eyed and riled.

'I'd put in the off book that I'm taking a few days off'.

'You don't just write in the book what you want and you get what you want! Do you think that everyone who writes what they want gets what they want? You cannot all have the days off that you want'.

St-ress.

I mean, they guarantee me just four hours per week in my contract, I'm virtually bogus self employed, what do I really owe them? I feel like I'm freelance.

'But I asked the supervisor here and...'

Barked interruption: 'You were supposed to work and you were not here and it created many problems for us'.

'But why didn't you call me?

I might as well have asked them for a warm buttered croissant brought to me on a silver tray.

'CALL YOU? We don't call you, you call US!'

Because I don't like being yelled at, and I'm feeling bad enough as it is, I don't respond. I slink off and wait to sign in at the window.

When it comes to doling out our allocation sheets, rape alarms and master keys, I'm left waiting.

The girls scramble to sign in, grab their sheets, and scan them intently. How many super-suites, how many departure rooms? How hard is the day going to be? Often there'll be rueful groans and sighs. Sundays are the worst. So many departures meaning a much more intense clean and monitoring by the supervisors.

They take their trays and cloths and get going to the lift. I’m last. My name is on the rota and list, and I've signed in, but there is no number of rooms by my name.

'I don't have any rooms allocated' I say once everyone has gone save for one of the office helpers who also cleans the public areas. She's standing next to me.

The office manager shouts from her desk: 'Yes, you have no rooms because we didn't know if you were going to turn up or not'.

'But you knew I was coming, I was on the rota!'.

The response is for both her and the supervisor to start shouting at me at the same time. I can't make out what they're saying. They're just outraged that I'm talking back to them, questioning them even.

'I can't hear you when you're both shouting at me?', I say firmly, 'Can you stop shouting at me? This is abusive behaviour'.

Well that goes down like a bomb.....

Threads

I’m seeing bathroom taps in my sleep. It's the repetition of the work. I'm being broken in. 

First it was five rooms a day, then 10 and now up to 11 and 14. Because the hotel is quiet, they're taking rooms off me and giving them to the other girls. I don't mind but I don't quite understand whether I’m being paid per room or by the hour. Girls with a different agency say it's by the room - £3.25 per room. If it's by the room then the pressure's higher than by the hour.

The supervisors are chastening me and urging me to work harder and faster.

I've been getting the order of the R2 spray on the bath chrome and taps a bit wrong for a couple of days now and it means I've been leaving slight water marks rather than the sleek, silver, mirrored shine the supervisors and guests expect. 

It's making me really anxious.

                                                        A Departure bathroom

The supervisors will open the door abruptly. As much to 'catch' me as it is because they themselves are under huge pressure to check every room in a short space of time.

Divesh, one of the more angsty ones tells me staccato-like: 'You have not cleaned properly. You have left water mark. You have left urine on the toilet seat, you must do this properly. If you want I can help, if you don't want, I will not help. Come back and re do the bathrooms'.

I keep sloping back and re-spraying, re-wiping....

I’ve got to get those taps right...

The lived-in rooms - AKA the stays or the occupieds – are interesting. Despite their uniformity you're entering into a private, personalised space, made intimate with things: souvenirs, shopping, books, notes.

I pick up peoples' clothes off their unmade bed or the floor. I fold pijamas, nighties, trousers, even socks and boxer shorts. I tuck a bear into a child's bed. Sometimes the adults have cuddly toys too....whatevs.....I tuck them in too.

I place belongings carefully to the side, in a neat way as I clean a desk or a sink. I'll stack reading books. Fold newspapers. Arrange toiletries. It's a form of care. I like the idea of the guest, the welcome to whoever it is, and making them feel like they are cared for. It's a cultural thing, it's a human thing. It's a bit like being a temporary, brief, home-maker. A housekeeper. Well, that is the department.....

                                                                     Yep. We do.

In one room, a deluxe suite, I walk in and immediately spot a pile of white powder on the desk. 

I freeze.

I look around.

This is a family suite. This ain’t no scar face gangsta pad.

I inspect it a little closer. There's a sports bottle nearby. It's definitely got to be some kind of glucose drink powder. I clean around it carefully and chuckle to myself thinking that the guest is going to wonder whether the room attendant thought they were a coke-head. Chuckle. But then I realise they won't even give me a second thought. They won't have even noticed I was here.

A high point of the day is a departure room with a leftover box of milk chocolate Brazil nuts in it. There are three left inside. SCORE. I guzzle them immediately. It's 3pm and I’m flagging and their sweet thick creaminess is a welcome lift.

What we encounter in the rooms shapes our day. Small surprises, insights, chop up the monotony. Sparks imagination, or revulsion.

We peer into and briefly audit someone's stay in the city; catch a glimpse of their passing lives. 

                                                       Not so bad

The channel they were watching or the radio station they were listening to; the books they read, the takeaways they ate, the clothes they wear, their medication, their (usually very expensive) face creams, make up, perfume and jewellery. And their toe nail clippings, old cotton buds, and condoms, used tissues. It's all there. Little shreds of, and windows into their work, their play, their holidays...

                                                       If you're really unlucky..

There are barely ever any tips or communication left for us. 

We're literally invisible. And so are they, the guests. 

It's lonely work. It's silent work. 

Before I go to sleep at night or if I wake up too early, nervous about being late for work, and slip back into a fitful half-sleep, I see the bathrooms, I see the large wooden headboards, I see the corridors. I don't see people. I just see fittings and furniture, and the linen and mirrors that thread people through these hundreds and hundreds of rooms.