Unionists at King’s College London have experienced “loss of faith†with their employers after several administrative issues. Despite a KCL team directly devoted to the situation there remains unsatisfactory issues including missed and incorrect payments were left unresolved for two months.
“Kings is a prestigious University that has a technical support team and a service desk, which operates 24/7 all year, and somehow we have had technical problems for over 2 months and the problems don’t seem to be anywhere near fixed,†Unison representative Ryan comments.
Unison at King’s College London took to the streets late last month outside of various King’s campuses, including the Strand building, the Henriette Raphael House, and the Weston Education centre, to protest disruptive technical problems with the payment of King’s Cleaning and Security staff.Â
Only last year, King’s made the decision to bring their cleaning staff in-house, after Unison workers “worked wholeheartedly through the year†alongside the KCL student led group Justice For Cleaners.
“For the second month in a row since formally coming in-house, there remains unsatisfactory issues around pay for cleaning and security staff,†a flyer passed to the public stated.
Despite the continuing issues, Unison appear happy with the steps being made by King’s to resolve the problems.
“At the moment they are responding and there seems to be a satisfactory resolution in most cases. Kings held sessions in all the campus and gave training to the managers so they can help workers understand how to access the payslips and to understand them.”
“Unison managed to talk with KCL in weekly meetings in ensuring these benefits were in their contracts of employment, which have been honoured by KCL.â€
However, some technical problems remain unresolved.
“Some payslips have errors in them, and some workers don’t even have payslips,†Ryan explains.
King’s College London state that, from the 1st August, they have taken a range of steps to support the 400+ new cleaning and security staff in becoming accustomed to the new payslip system. These include providing guidance materials, news updates, a pay calculator service, and drop in surgeries around the various King’s College London campuses. King’s have also said that their HR team has been available to further help in this transition period. “This is critical as we integrate the cleaning and security services into the wider King’s operation – a process that takes time.”
King’s admit that some staff were paid incorrectly in their first month working for the institution due to issues with transferring data, but have said “this was resolved very quickly.“
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