Ferrari showroom cleaners strike for living wage: 'They want us out' London pair suspended without pay after asking for an increase to their £7.50-an-hour wage after five years of service
The Guardian 2017 15.21 BST Last modified on Friday 6 October 2017 16.33 BST Best friends Freddy Lopez and Angelica Valencia Bolanos have spent six evenings a week for the past five years polishing the white tiled floors of the Ferrari and Maserati showrooms in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea – London’s richest district.
Although the work is arduous and has left them struggling with health problems, they enjoyed their jobs and went home each night proud of the sparkling showroom. But when they turned up for work last Thursday they were met by their bosses – who they had never previously met – ordered to hand over their showroom keys and were suspended without pay.
The suspension came two days after they voted to walk out on strike after their employer refused requests for an increase to their £7.50-an-hour minimum wage.
“We did not have a single complaint in five years,” Valencia Bolanos, 49, said. “Now, when we join a union, and ask for a fair amount of money – enough to live in this expensive city – they want us out.”
Valencia Bolanos said they were required to meet very high standards which they continued to do after their hours were reduced from six hours a night to four. “Everything has to be immaculate, there can’t be a mark or even a fingerprint anywhere when they are trying to sell £200,000 cars,” she said in her native Spanish.
“They are selling luxury cars for hundreds of thousands of pounds. I’m sure they could afford to pay a living wage if they wanted to, but they don’t even want to look at us,” she added. “I feel very disappointed that after five years of working hard for them this is how they treat us when all we are asking for is the living wage.”
The living wage, pioneered by Citizens UK, is £9.75-an-hour in London and £8.45 elsewhere in the UK. In spite of 3,000 employers, including Ikea, Lidl, Aldi and many public sector bodies, signing up to the living wage there are still 5.6 million people struggling on less. In London about 680,000 people – one in 13 of the capital’s population – earn less than £9.75.
Lopez and Valencia Bolanos, who are from Ecuador, were struggling to get by before they were suspended and said they were now forced to beg for help from charity shops.
“Even working two jobs, in order to survive I have to share a bedroom with another man. I am 51-years-old,” said Lopez, with a sigh. “In all of my years, I have never seen anywhere like London where there is so much wealth surrounded by so much poverty.”
Valencia Bolanos lives a few streets away from him in Streatham, south London, where she shares a one-bedroom flat with her teenage son Angel Romero Valencia. Since her income has been cut off, he has started cleaning a bakery from 4am-9am, before turning up for accountancy lectures at Middlesex University.
“He is considering pulling out of university as he is finding work and study too hard to balance,” said Valencia Bolanos.
Valencia Bolanos rode on the 319 bus for an hour each way to the Ferrari showroom on Old Brompton Road, a stone’s throw from The Boltons, the third most expensive street in the UK where the average home costs £19.9m. “Excuse the expression, but it makes me sick to see such wealth when there are so many poor people in this city,” she said.
Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
After polishing the floors and cleaning the toilets at the Ferrari showroom, Valencia Bolanos and Lopez walked up the street to the Maserati showroom, which is opposite South Kensington underground station.
Both showrooms are owned by HR Owen, Britain’s biggest luxury car dealership. The company made a gross profit of £48m on sales of £335m in the year to the end of April 2016, according to the latest accounts filed at Companies House.
HR Owen is owned by the Philippine investment firm Berjaya Group. Its biggest shareholder is Vincent Tan, a Malaysian millionaire with a $820m (£628m) fortune, according to Forbes magazine.
HR Owen staff declined to comment when the Guardian visited the showroom, which displayed six Ferraris including a red “price on application” La Ferrari 2014 with gull-wing doors and a Ferrari 488 GTB on sale for £219,000.
A spokesman for HR Owen’s head office said Lopez, who has cleaned the showrooms for seven years, and Valencia Bolanos, who joined him five years ago, are not employees and their services are provided by Templewood Cleaning Services.
A spokesman for the cleaning firm confirmed that both were employees, adding: “This is an issue between Templewood and these employees – it has nothing to do with HR Owen. Freddy and Angelica were suspended for one reason – claiming payment for hours they had not actually worked, an irrefutable fact; we are now following due process regarding this matter. Contracts between Templewood and its employees fully comply with all employment laws.
“Given that United Voices of the World Union (UVW), which is representing the couple, has issued a statement that it will immediately initiate legal proceedings against Templewood Cleaning, at an employment tribunal and county court, Templewood is unable to make any further comment.”
The UVW said Templewood had examined the showroom’s CCTV cameras to find one day when Lopez and Valencia Balanos left work “just a few minutes early after getting the job down to a first-rate standard”.
Petros Elia, the union’s general secretary said: “They work on zero-hours contracts to get the job done,. They have never signed in or signed out so there has been no deception. They leave when the job is complete, often they have stayed late unpaid to finish.”
Lopez and Valencia Bolanos, who organised a protest outside the Ferrari showroom last weekend, vowed to continue with their planned strike on Monday. “We intend to continue to fight this fight until victory,” said Valencia Bolanos.
A Queen’s Counsel barrister at Cloisters chambers has offered to represent the pair pro bono.
The workers’ plight has also been taken up by some of the regulars at the Duke of Clarence pub opposite the Ferrari showroom. Michael Groves, an 86-year-old chartered surveyor who has lived in the neighbourhood for about 40 years, said: “It’s an outrage to pay anyone less than £10-an-hour for working here with all this wealth. If they [HR Owen] can sell Ferraris for £200,000, they can afford to pay their cleaners £10.”
