Security staff protest outside Finsbury Park Jobcentre Plus

SECURITY guards have protested over minimum wage salaries for dangerous jobs.

For the second month in a row, they demonstrated outside Job Centres across the country, including one in Medina Road, Finsbury Park.The current rate is £11.44 an hour.

Father-of-five Reuben Ogunleye has been a security guard at the centre for 17 years and is the GMB union rep.
In that time he said he had been racially abused, spat at, kicked and punched.

“We are the ones facing knife threats, abuse and harassment from the customers, people who spit on us. They call us names,” said Mr Ogunleye, as he stood on the picket line.

He has been to court more than five times to pursue prosecutions against people who have abused or assaulted him, but despite winning all his cases, he has now stopped as he says he doesn’t get paid by the Department for Work and Pension’s contractors G4S for the time spent in court. G4S said they do offer money to staff for court visits. Mr Ogunleye and his colleagues say they have never heard of this before.

G4S then challenged Mr Ogunleye’s account, arguing they had no record of him being assaulted or going to court. A spokesperson said they had “found no evidence to support their allegations”.

Employees Reuben Ogunleye and Hashem Nurhussein

Mr Ogunleye this week said this was more evidence of a lack of care for staff as he claimed incident reports are routinely filed for all assaults that occur at the Job Centre.

Hashem Nurhussein, who has worked for G4S for 20 years and works six days a week to pay his rent and bills, said he too is assaulted at work.

“It’s really not good. It’s depressing, the things we have to put up with,” he said. “Being a security guard is not an easy job. They should pay us and treat us fairly.”

GMB officer Eamon O’Hearn said: “We are troubled that G4S appear to not have any records of the incidents referred to, and we hope this doesn’t represent a systematic under-reporting of incidents. The claim that they offer financial support for attendance at court will also be news to many guards.”

While the GMB has a policy of asking for £15 per hour for its members, it has not named a figure to resolve this dispute but said it should reflect the dangers security guards face.

G4S are currently offering an extra 23p per hour but are understood to have made a pay offer for next April which is a “significant amount above the national minimum wage,” according to Mr O’Hearn. He argued if the higher wage is seen as appropriate for 2025 it should be appropriate for now.

He said: “These workers are spat at, stabbed, hit with bottles and threatened with death while doing their job, yet 90 per cent of them can barely put food on the table.”

A G4S spokesperson said: “Our dedicated security colleagues do a great job, sometimes in difficult circumstances. We urge the GMB to present our offer to our employees, which is both above minimum wage and inflation. We are keen to bring this dispute to an amicable conclusion.

They also claimed they offered “both financial and emotional support to all employees that want to pursue a prosecution or are called as a witness, including making up any shortfall in earnings once the Crown Prosecution Service has issued compensation”.