One maid has resigned with colleagues threatening to follow suit

Gordon Brown’s “Spring of Discontent” has reached Buckingham Palace, with unhappy domestic staff threatening industrial unrest. Royal maids are up in arms after being roped in to work evenings, on top of their day jobs, for no extra pay. The situation is so serious one maid has resigned with colleagues threatening to follow suit. The move comes after staff signed contracts three years ago agreeing to “help out” at evening events. A source said: “We had no idea just how much extra evening work would be involved. “It was a novelty, being asked to serve drinks to the great and the good, so we agreed thinking it would only be once or twice a month. But we’ve been asked to do more and more, some of us working two or three nights a week, for nothing.

“We don’t feel we can say no – there’s a climate of fear. We’re asked to come in on evenings when we’re not in work during the day but it just ends up feeling like we are always working. Our social and family lives are suffering. We are already on minimum wage, but the extra work makes it feel like slave wages – we’d be better off working in a hotel.” Up to 35 chambermaids are employed at Buckingham Palace, on pay of about £12,000 a year, to do all the cleaning and laundry. Before the contractual changes, footmen were paid up to £20 an hour to staff after-hours functions. However they were axed and replaced by maids working for free. It is not the first time Buckingham Palace has angered its staff.

The Queen’s former treasurer Sir Michael Peat, now Prince Charles’s private secretary, was dubbed “the axe man” during his time at Buckingham Palace in the Nineties, when he shut the subsidised staff bar and stopped the practice of staff being allowed to keep unfinished bottles of wine opened to serve to guests. The source added: “We love working for the Queen and accept the low wages because of all the privileges, but we feel we’re being taken advantage of.” A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said: “For the last three years the household has broadened employees’ skills through a focus on training and development. “This enables us to use staff more flexibly, giving better job satisfaction, better value for public money and enhancing skills for the future.”