Case studies archive
Case study 3 - Catering and Cleaning Contracts
The cleaning and catering industries are ones where there has been a history of low rates of pay. To support the Mayor’s commitment to promoting a living wage, the GLA was the first organisation to introduce living wage provisions into its catering and cleaning contracts at City Hall in 2005 and 2006 respectively. As part of their Tenders for these contracts, bidders were required to indicate whether they would accept a London Living Wage clause as part of the contract, including a requirement to ensure that no employees were paid below the living wage as determined annually by GLA Economics, to ensure that other employment privileges were not reduced as a result of paying a living wage and to provide the GLA with access to information to monitor the application of the clause. The successful Tenderers, Jill Bartlett and Company (catering) and OCS Ltd (cleaning), accepted this clause and has since employed staff on the GLA’s contract on terms compliant with this policy.
In addition to the London Living Wage provisions the contractors are also required to work with the GLA on implementing a wider range of initiatives focussed on health food and sustainable business practices including:
Catering
- promoting and making available fairly traded food and drink
- organic food and sustainable sourcing
- green procurement in respect of catering supplies (eg recycled products)
- ensuring that services are delivered in line with GLA’s equality and diversity policies and catering and hospitality staff have received appropriate training in support of this.
Cleaning
- monitoring of supplier diversity in subcontracting
- ensuring that services are delivered in line with GLA’s equality and diversity policies and cleaning staff have received appropriate training in support of this
- Environmentally friendly product specifications for cleaning products and packaging
