Hotel staff in fight for decent wages
Published 18 Aug 2011 09:30
Fifteen workers at the Beardmore Hotel are taking their bosses to an employment tribunal.
The hospitality staff - who are casual workers - are ultimately working for the NHS because the hotel is owned by the health body due to its affiliation with the Golden Jubilee Hospital.
But they don't get the same pay as NHS workers, which is a minimum of £7.29 an hour.
The casual hospitality staff are being paid considerably less than that, with some only scraping minimum wage.
Permanent hospitality staff - who are on contracts - are paid NHS rates and earn more for working weekends.
Although the disgruntled hotel workers are classed as casual, some have been working there for as long as six years and are working the equivalent of full-time hours.
The staff called in Unison to help last year, but the union says management at the Beardmore have refused to discuss the wage issue.
To rub salt into their wounds, the hotel has taken on a large number of new casual staff in recent weeks, meaning existing staff have had their hours cut.
The original staff believe this is a direct result of management receiving letters informing them of the tribunal action. Stuart Douglas, 25, is a casual worker and one of the Unison reps at the Beardmore.
He has been working at the hotel for six years.
He said: "A year ago I was getting at least 37-and-a-half hours a week.
"Now I'm down to around £120 a week, which is about 18 hours.
"There are people there who have got families and cars and houses to pay for.
"We will take them to tribunal."
Colleague Joseph Swan, 28, added: "Up until about four weeks ago I was regularly getting 30 hours a week.
"I wasn't treated any different from the full-time staff.
"If you wanted to make changes you had to get somebody to cover your shift.
"I was working Saturdays and Sundays and working with somebody earning considerably more money.
"They were making the same amount of money in two days working a Saturday and a Sunday, as I could working three or four shifts.
"About four weeks ago the hotel employed 17 more casual staff.
"That was after they received letters telling them we were taking them to tribunal."
The Beardmore Hotel would not directly comment on the tribunal action, however, it has justified its wage scale and says new workers were taken on due to a "dwindling workforce".
A spokeswoman said: "The workforce is a mixture of both full-time contracted employees and a flexible workforce (casual and/or agency workers) that is the norm for the hospitality industry.
"As our pool of casual workers has dwindled, we recently held a successful open evening attended by nearly 200 people.
"This has resulted in us providing more opportunities to the local community while ensuring that we can meet the demands of our busiest days. We are committed to reviewing rates of pay for casual workers annually and our current hourly rate is above industry standard for the area.
"Although part of the NHS National Waiting Times Centre, the Beardmore is required to be financially self sufficient and to operate as a robust and sustainable business without becoming a drain on the public purse.
"Our board recently endorsed the continued use of a flexible workforce to ensure the financial stability of the venue - allowing us to meet the peaks and troughs of the hospitality and conferencing business without the ongoing financial costs of permanent staff.
"In this current financial climate, we firmly believe that this is the right decision."
Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.
