Bosses at outsourcing firm Amey have celebrated a £500m jump in revenue and a £92m rise in profits, despite clashing with workers over a below-inflation pay offer which the union says would “put Scrooge to shame”, a video reveals.
The self-described “government’s largest strategic supplier” employs thousands of external contract staff and is fighting calls for staff including school cleaners, caretakers and rubbish collectors to be given the same level as those employed directly by councils.
The company said in May that such demands could lead to wage increases of up to 30%, which would be “fundamentally unsustainable”, but a video briefing accidentally shared online appears to tell a different story.
In the clip, obtained by the Guardian, Amey’s chief executive Amanda Fisher, who received more than £750,000 last year, and chief financial officer Andrew Nelson praise each other for an exceptionally good start to the year.
“The high numbers show that the turnover of the core business was around £2.4bn,” says Nelson. “What’s more remarkable is that this is almost £500m or 25% more than we expected when we set the budget, and as Amanda said, all the businesses exceeded their original targets.”
Nelson goes on to say that earnings or profits are likely to be £92m higher than expected.
Amey staff who clean and maintain schools in Glasgow are preparing to strike to achieve pay parity with those employed by local authorities.
In the video, Fisher says the company is “committed to paying the real living wage” and will continue to do so. Amy pays cleaners in Glasgow £9.90 an hour, the minimum required under the Real Wage deal.
Fisher said most staff would get a 4.21% pay rise, well below the rate of inflation, which hit 9.4% in June and which the Bank of England predicts will rise to 13% later this year year.
John Slaven, convenor of Amy’s union, the GMB, said: “Amy’s treatment of cleaners, janitors and maintenance workers is Dickensian. Amey is a multi-national company that makes huge profits but pushes our members into poverty with a pay offer that would put Scrooge to shame.
“Again, Glasgow City Council needs to look into Amy’s employment practices. They are the contract holders and are ultimately responsible for the exploitation that goes on under their noses.”
A spokesman for the GMB union said: “Amy is getting rich on the back of public money. But the working people who clean our children’s schools and pick up our trash are left out of pocket. It is not right that our money should be used to help Amey to higher profits when its workers are struggling with a cost of living crisis. We need Amey to pay its workers fairly.”
The video, which is from a briefing in February and was inadvertently made publicly available via Microsoft Teams, has been deleted after the Guardian approached Amy for comment.
When first approached, an Amey spokesman said: “We do not recognize the figure for Amey’s finances that you quoted. Our latest published accounts for 2019 and 2020 show that we have made a loss.”
When he sent the video, a second Amey spokesperson said: “The figures provided in the internal video from earlier in the year were an early forecast of a difference in revenue versus budget in respect of specific parts of the business. They weren’t a prediction for Amy in general.
Amy was also at loggerheads with workers collecting bins in the Elmbridge and Surrey Heath boroughs of Surrey, who claimed they were being paid £3 an hour less than council staff doing similar work.
In a third statement on Friday, the company announced it had reached an agreement with the Surrey container workers, adding: “When we are in pay negotiations, we have made strong offers, in line with inflation, which keep wages at or above rates for other similar roles. “
Amey had offered container collectors in Surrey a 10 per cent pay rise or 25 per cent for refuse lorry drivers.
The outsourcer, which employs around 15,000 people in Britain, is owned by Spanish conglomerate Ferrovial.
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