Cleaners on First Great Western trains are to strike tomorrow <<fri>> in a protest over pay.

The workers, who are contracted from service provider Mitie, voted 100 per cent in favour of action starting tomorrow and continuing on Friday, June 10.

But company bosses say passengers travelling from Banbury and Oxford to London Paddington will not be affected by the action with cleaning carried out as normal.

The move is in protest over a one per cent pay increase from April this year following a 1.25 per cent rise last year.

Staff are also angry about attempts to move to paying staff monthly rather than weekly which officials at the RMT union say hits low paid workers particularly hard.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “By voting 100 per cent for strike action in their ballot our members are sending a clear message to the company that they will not bend the knee and accept this attack on their standards of living while the Mitie boardroom is awash with cash.”

“It is down to the company to come back to us with a proper pay offer that treats our cleaner members with the respect that they deserve.”

But First Great Western spokesman John Ratchford said: “We are confident Mitie will continue to clean our trains with no disruption to customers or services.”

Erica Lockhart, spokesman for Mitie, declined to comment and it is not clear how many staff are involved or how their duties are being covered.

Mitie recently announced a pre-tax profit of £86.8m for the year to March 31, a rise of 8.9 per cent on the previous year, while its annual turnover grew by ten per cent to £1.89bn.