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Wimbledon rakes in millions, so why do its night workers get peanuts?

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If the All England Club can afford to pay out millions to the world’s richest sports stars, it can afford to pay night workers more than £8 an hour
Photo of female worker at Wimbledon holding a basket of strawberries
Credit: Getty/Dan Kitwood

Another day, another story about foul play on workers’ pay at a UK sporting institution.

Today it’s emerged that catering workers at Wimbledon are being paid the same hourly rate for night shifts as day ones.

That means they’re earning just £8 an hour – well below the £10.20 for employees in London recommended by the Living Wage Foundation (LWF).

This while working at a tournament that made £31 million in profit last year, thanks in part to the 22,000 bottles of champagne, 166,055 portions of strawberries and cream, and over 300,000 glasses of Pimm’s they sell on average every year.

A tiny fraction of that profit would be enough to pay everyone working at Wimbledon a living wage, so we’re calling time on yet another attempt to deny workers a fair deal.

Foul play

Let’s be clear: Wimbledon organisers the All England Club could insist that every casual worker at the tournament is paid a living wage if it wanted to.

After all, it can afford to award the players a total of £34 million in prize money this year – including £39,000 to every first-round loser in the singles competition.

Yet according to the GMB union, major sporting events like Wimbledon have now become a race to the bottom on pay, with employers undercutting each other in a bid to win contracts.

So casual workers like those at Wimbledon end up earning less than they should, especially for night work.

Employers can get away with this because it’s not technically illegal to pay workers the same for night shifts as for day shifts.

While this may not be against the law, it certainly is against fair play.

Impact of night work

We’ve pointed out before that working night shifts can really play havoc with family and social life, and have long-term health impacts.

260,000 people now regularly work nights across the UK – a number that has shot up by 9% over the last five years.

They deserve strong rights and protections at work to make sure they can get on with the job safely and happily.

And since working nights also leads to extra costs and inconvenience for workers, especially around childcare, night work wages should reflect this.

Calling time on exploitation at work

This isn’t the first that sporting organisations have been caught out paying workers less than they deserve.

Just last week, football clubs such as Bristol City and Doncaster Rovers were among more than 200 employers named and shamed by the government for not paying the National Minimum Wage.

And earlier this year, it emerged that only four of the 20 Premier League football teams (Chelsea, Everton, West Ham and Liverpool) had adopted the real Living Wage.

Whether it’s underpaying apprentices or failing to pay travel time, dodgy bosses are using every trick in the book to avoid paying their workers what they’re entitled to.

That’s why the trade union movement will keep fighting for a minimum wage of at least £10 an hour and an end to exploitative zero hours contracts and agency work.

And it’s why we’ll keep putting the pressure on events like Wimbledon to pay a fair wage for a day’s – or night’s – work.

If you think you might be being underpaid or want to find out more about how to secure your rights, why not take a look at our guide to the minimum and living wages.

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