ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Writing from Russia, Oleg Popov from Cristanval explains a lack of legal rights for cleaning firms.

In the present crisis, relations between cleaning companies and their clients are growing ever more strained, fines continue to rise, and monitoring of cleaning operations is becoming ever more scrupulous.

Often there isn’t any negotiation taking place at all. The client sends in its own proposal and informs the company no possible changes to it will be considered. There’s no confusion regarding the fact that in a contract such as this, the customer enjoys all the advantages while the contractor is the party stuck taking on all the obligations. A long checklist is provided of services offered along with a checklist of possible fines just as long.

Clients often impose double and triple fines: 10 per cent of the cost for inadequate quality service, five per cent if the frequency and/or schedule of the services to be provided are breached, five per cent for inadequate quality of additional services, plus compensation of 0.1 per cent of the cost of the services for each day they are delayed. And the customer has no obligations for violating contract conditions, such as breaching payment terms.

For instance, a large shopping mall in one case demanded that a 25 per cent fine be paid according to a contract clause for the inadequate quality of the services provided. Meanwhile the customer’s representatives at the facility said this was just a demand received from the lawyers at the main office and fines of that amount would not be incurred.

However, the mall started to bill the company for those charges, justified by the fact that the shopping mall does not have a large total walking area, it’s not completely rented out to vendors, and they needed to ‘optimise’ their expenditures. The contract ended up being terminated in two months and payment was received only after a court ruling.

A few things are worth mentioning about checklists. The fewer contract clauses (features/jobs) posted for evaluation, the easier it is to issue a fine to the contractor and lower the amount owed for cleaning.

Contracts with large infrastructure facilities envisage that in the case 200 corrected violations are incurred within the course of a year, the customer is entitled to terminate the contract without consent of the contractor. In a large facility with a large total walkable area, any piece of paper tossed on the floor that the cleaner sweeps up two minutes later or a small soda spill that’s cleaned up five minutes later could end up being violations. In which case, the customer could then continue to manipulate the contractor at its own discretion. The contractor ends up entirely dependent on the customer’s opinion.

Client discussions aside, at shopping malls fines could rack up even higher than the payment amount agreed on for the services. The cleaning company will actually have to pay for the services it provided. Should the contractor lack the desire to work in such conditions, the client’s response is quite simple. “If you don’t want to do the job, then don’t. We’ve got a whole line of companies waiting behind you!” So Russian cleaning companies are forced to agree to work for peace of mind, rather than money.