Pay and Wages
Understand your rights to fair pay, minimum wages, holiday pay and payslips, and learn what to do if your employer underpays you or makes unlawful deductions.
Are You Being Paid What You Deserve?
Every worker deserves to be paid correctly and on time. Yet cleaners and other outsourced workers frequently face problems such as unpaid wages, incorrect hourly rates, missing overtime payments and unexplained deductions.
Knowing your rights is the first step towards protecting your income.
Understanding Your Pay Rights
UK employment law provides important protections to ensure workers receive the wages they are entitled to.
These include:
Minimum wage: Most workers are legally entitled to receive at least the applicable National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage.
Unpaid wages: Your employer must pay you the wages you are legally and contractually owed.
Unlawful deductions: Employers generally cannot deduct money from your wages without a lawful basis.
Holiday pay: Most workers are entitled to paid annual leave, calculated according to the applicable legal rules.
Payslips: Employees and workers generally have the right to receive an itemised payslip on or before payday.
Overtime: Additional payments may be required under your employment contract or other binding agreements.
If you work in London, you may also be entitled to the London Living Wage where this forms part of your contractual employment terms.
What If Your Employer Is Not Paying You Correctly?
If your wages are missing, your hourly rate is incorrect or your employer has made deductions you do not understand, you do not have to accept the situation without question.
Keep copies of your payslips, employment contract and records of the hours you have worked. These can help establish whether you have been underpaid.
Pay disputes can affect entire workplaces, particularly when cleaning contractors fail to implement agreed pay increases or make changes to working arrangements.
Workers can be stronger when they challenge these problems together.
Stand Up for Your Rights with CAIWU
At CAIWU, we believe workers should not have to fight alone to receive the wages they have earned.
We support our members in challenging underpayments, disputing unlawful deductions and organising collectively for better pay and working conditions.
Your work has value. Your wages matter. Your rights deserve to be respected.
Join CAIWU and become part of a union that stands alongside cleaners and other workers fighting for fair treatment at work.