In November 2019, UCL promised al Security Officers an improvements in the holiday entitlement. UCL said this would be implemented by 1 December 2019. This would include an increase in days of annual leave + paid closure days and bank holidays.

However, on January 6 the majority of Security Officers working at UCL reported the failure of Axis to pay their wages for closure days.

It has been admitted by  Axis that management failed to notify their payroll department properly to make the payment, deducting thousand of pounds from ALL security officers at UCL. Yet another example of the incompetence of outsourced companies.

IWGB-UoL’S branch secretary has written to UCL to demand immediate payment:

To whom it may concern,

On 6 January 2020, a number of security officers working at UCL reported the failure of UCL’s subcontractor Axis to pay their wages as per the changes adopted on 1 December 2019 (payment of closure days for those not working and payment at double rate for those working during closure days).

The mentioned changes have not been reflected in the wages paid this month. This has been further confirmed in an email from Anna Knight where she states “we have experienced a syncing issue with the system which therefore may lead to pay queries tomorrow regarding your pay day 7th January 2020”.

Please note that this error made by Axis has resulted in the unlawful deduction of wages from all security officers employed by Axis on the UCL contract who have not received any pay for the closure, or double pay (if they worked), as per the letter of variation of their contracts received by security officers in mid-December.

This shows not only that the changes announced by UCL as per the harmonisation of terms and conditions have not been implemented, but it also constitutes further evidence of the utter incompetence of the security contractor at UCL. All this after weeks of silence from Axis, where they did not even bother to inform their workforce of how these changes would take effect, and avoided all questions raised regarding this until two weeks after the deadline for implementation of the changes. This is despite the numerous emails sent by our union requesting clarification and dialogue regarding the plans.

It is frankly astounding that UCL continue to tolerate the incompetence of this subcontractor and their unlawful practices. These repeated failures only make it clearer that the system of outsourcing at UCL results in incompetence and failure, harming those precariously employed under such contracts.

We urge UCL to take immediate action regarding this matter to ensure that all the Security Officers at UCL receive correct payment no later than 13 January 2020 by close of business.

Should Axis fail to pay these wages we will not hesitate to initiate legal proceedings to recover them.

Furthermore, we urge UCL to take seriously the demands made by the majority of the outsourced workforce to be brought in-house. We urge UCL to meet with the representatives of the IWGB union and to quickly implement an end to outsourcing to ensure further mistakes of this nature are avoided in future.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email.

Kind Regards,

Dr Jamie Woodcock