CINEWORLD bosses would have rather closed their most profitable art house cinema than pay the living wage, workers claimed yesterday after bagging an award for their inspirational fight.

Entertainment union Bectu’s Ritzy cinema branch won the TUC young workers’ conference youth campaign award for its vibrant pay campaign.

Accepting the award, Ritzy worker Holly Fishman Crook said her union activity had given her “a voice within the workplace” and “an insane amount of fun along the way.”

The multimillion-pound cinema chain’s offer to the Brixton, south London, Ritzy staff fell short of the living wage, but workers did win a 26 per cent pay rise over three years and successfully fought off a later bid to sack a third of staff.

At a workshop session at the conference, one union activist at the cinema said they had been forced to settle for less than the living wage due to management’s cavalier attitudes.

“It got to the point that they’d sooner have closed the Ritzy, their most profitable independent cinema, than pay us the living wage,” the worker said.

But activists from other workplaces said the successes of the Ritzy campaign had spurred on the anti-privatisation strikes at the National Gallery and activism within call centres, and voluntary union recognition deals in theatres.

Bectu rep Rob Lugg credited their success to being in “a union that respects the principles of democracy and lay activism.”