EY Janitorial Staff Are Protesting the Firm’s Shitty Treatment and Looming Layoffs

In London last week, a good number of the cleaning staff who keep EY UK looking tidy — 48 of the 55 of them, according to Business Insider — were assembled in front of the Canary Wharf office to protest potential job cuts. The union that represents them posted this video to Xitter:

Cleaners strike at EY getting started!
📣🥁✊🏽
Join us!
No to job cuts!
No to exploitation! pic.twitter.com/MEeLU9hTm7

— IWGB (@IWGBunion) July 21, 2025

The London office cleaners are not employed directly by EY but rather work for a facilities management company called Mitie. A third of them, many of whom work two or three jobs and make £13.85 (less than $19 USD) an hour, have been told they could be laid off. One reason Mitie gave the cleaners’ union for layoffs was an “alleged agreement with the client to reduce staff in order to secure the contract,” reported BI. Guess we can extrapolate from this that it was another difficult financial year for the Yellow and Black.

In their story, BI spoke to a 63-year-old woman who’s cleaned up after EY staff for 15 years. This is what Rosa Jarrin had to say:

“I come to work sick or not. I give it everything I have,” she said.

When asked what would happen to her if she were laid off, she became emotional and said it was difficult to think about the future.

“I’m feeling really vulnerable because this is how I make my daily bread. I would like to keep working until I retire,” Jarrin said.

And it somehow gets worse:

IWGB said cleaners had reported overwork before the redundancies were announced and that some had expressed concerns that if the proposed layoffs go ahead, they would push an “already high workload” onto a smaller number of staff.

Boy does that sound familiar.

EY’s London cleaners are picketing its office after over a third were told their jobs could be cut [Business Insider]