7 October 2013

Green Party launches campaign for a living wage for parliamentary cleaners

The Green Party is launching a campaign, Clean Up the House, with the goal of ensuring all parliamentary cleaners are paid a living wage of $18.40 an hour and is challenging MPs from other parties to spend an evening with the cleaners.  

Campbell Live this evening exposed the conditions and pay rates of the parliamentary cleaners.  Most of the parliamentary cleaners earn little more than fourteen dollars an hour.  The Service and Food Workers Union that represents these workers is pushing for them to receive a living wage of $18.40.

“It is time for politicians to get our own house in order. Our cleaners should earn a living wage of $18.40 an hour,” Green Party industrial relations spokesperson Denise Roche said today.

“I will be writing to every party in Parliament to ask them to support the call for our cleaners to be paid a living wage.

“Parliament should be leading from the front on the living wage, that is why the Green Party is supporting the cleaners with the Clean Up the House campaign.

“In this campaign we will be challenging MPs from all the other political parties to come along and spend an evening with the people that clean their offices and bathrooms.

“Sadly recent negative comments directed at the parliamentary cleaners by National MP Tau Henare show that their hard work is not appreciated by some of us.

“I intend to spend an evening on the night shift with the cleaners and send out a challenge to all other MPs to come and join me – including the self-described West Side Tory Tau Henare,” Ms Roche said.

ENDS

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