The cleaners who won fair wages and a way to belong | Aditya Chakrabortty

The latest in our new economics series looks at how one university's decision to bring cleaning staff in-house changed working lives and transformed a community for the better

A queue was already forming by the time Isaac Oti turned up for work before dawn that May morning. He came back a couple of hours later and - "boom!" People were spilling out of Queen Mary college, past the gates, past the engineering faculty. They were standing out on the road three or four deep, almost reaching the tube station.

"It was crazy." Even 10 years later, Oti's eyes shine at the memory. "CRAZY!"

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Through outsourcing, university managers routinely allow low-paid workers to be treated disgustingly

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