mitie cleaners take on city of london bosses

Today was the latest in a series of demos organised by Mitie cleaners working at Willis Group in the City of London, unfairly dismissed after standing up to management attacks. Such protests take place at the Willis building on Bank’s Lime Street every Friday at 1pm (email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for info). Jake Lagnado wrote this piece for The Commune about the importance of this fight.

The story

In mid-2007 around 25 cleaners at multinational insurance brokers the Willis Group based in the City of London began to organise under the umbrella of Unite’s Justice for Cleaners campaign, for the campaign’s main demands of the ‘living wage’ rather than the minimum wage.

the commune issue 4 – out now!

The fourth issue of our paper The Commune (May 2009) is now available. You can read the PDF online by clicking the image below, write to us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to request a printed copy, or look at the list of articles below as they are uploaded.

go forth and occupy! – editorial of The Commune, part 1

mitie cleaners resist city of london bosses – by Jake Lagnado

no to “no2eu”! – by Dave Spencer

we can defy the jobs massacre – editorial of The Commune, part 2

of policemen and mad professors: communism and physical force – by Chris Kane

workers occupy visteon factories – by Samantha O’Driscoll

dynamics of the struggle at visteon – by strike supporters at enfield

update on activities of the commune around the country

political parties and workers’ self-management – by Goran Markovic

the struggle for women’s emancipation today – by Liz Leicester

the g20 protests: the devil against the detail – by Nathan Coombs

leftist opposition gains ground in algeria poll – by Solomon Anker

enfield ford/visteon occupation ends with no conclusion…

Some supporters at the occupation at Enfield Visteon produced this article on the end of the action

The occupation was an inspiration for many – the spirit of the workers who refused to submit to being blatantly robbed by their bosses seemed to be what many had been waiting for, for far too long – the early possible signs of a resurgence of class struggle. Now that the occupation is ended without any clear victory in sight, some reflection is needed on the strengths and weaknesses of what has happened. It is always easy to be wise after the event, and necessary to be careful not to forget who initiated this struggle and took the risks. Any criticisms are as much of ourselves as supporters as of the occupiers. Still, we’ll never get very far in developing our struggles if we don’t reflect on where we went wrong and how we all might do things better next time.

hmrc call centre workers plan strike action

by Steve Ryan

Workers in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) contact centres have voted massively to take strike action. Interestingly in a time of recession, the strike is not about pay, but conditions. Over the past few years the government policy of handing over public services to private sector managers (usually failed ones ) has led to a deterioration in working conditions, call centres being a prime example.

The centres are desperately understaffed meaning workers are micro-managed to achieve impossible turn-around times. Toilet breaks etc. are strictly monitored and bosses swan around with walkie talkies to chase up workers who appear to have been off line too long. Even so only half of calls are answered and a recent TV programme on HMRC was deeply critical of the service provided.

workers go it alone

Jake Lagnado, who is involved in the Latin American Workers’ Association, wrote this report (in a personal capacity) on the March 22nd National Shop Stewards Network event for the Morning Star

As bosses use the recession to step up their attacks on workers, more and more rank-and-file union activists are declaring that they cannot afford to wait for union leaders to give the nod before fighting back.

Last week, the London Shop Stewards Network held a “workplace organising conference” to discuss how workers at the sharp end of the employer’s offensive, particularly agency staff and migrant workers, could learn from each others’ experience of resistance.

The London activists are part of the National Shop Stewards Network which was created in 2007 to forge grass-roots links between organised workers in different workplaces and rebuild the strength of our working-class movement.

text of leaflet for 28th march ‘put people first’ demo

The New Labour minister Ed Balls has described the current downturn as the greatest crisis of capitalism “for over a hundred years”, and wage-freezes and mass-lay-offs are biting hard. Unemployment has now surpassed two million, February seeing a further 138,000 people forced onto the dole as a result of the biggest jobs cull since 1971.

The supposedly all-powerful market, whose authority ‘could not’ be challenged, is laid bare, as a fraud: the emperor has no clothes. The corporate press now openly mocks the free-marketeer ideology which was so central to the ruling class’s discourse only a couple of years ago. Presidents and prime ministers, too, say they are breaking with the ‘old ways’ of neo-liberalism: Gordon Brown even told the European Parliament on Tuesday 24th March:

“The problem of unbridled free markets in an unsupervised market place is that they can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self-interest, all sense of value to consumer choice and all sense of worth to a price tag.”

update on 30th march forum

We are pleased to announce an addition to the line-up of speakers for The Commune’s 30th March London forum on “what unions do we have, and what unions do we need?”.

Fabien Liberski is the Convenor and Health & Safety Officer in Southwark Council, and was victimised by his employer with the collusion of UNISON bureaucrats.

He will be speaking alongside Alberto Einstein Durango, a cleaner activist involved in disputes at Schroders and Willis in the City of London, in the face of resistance by the Unite union; and John Moloney, a PCS activist in the Department for Work and Pensions.

The meeting is from 7pm on Monday 30th March at the Lucas Arms, near King’s Cross. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info, and see here for a map.

mitie cleaners’ demo in city of london, friday 20th march

This Friday 20th March at 13.00 hours, Latino and African cleaners employed by Mitie at global insurance brokers the Willis Group will be demonstrating outside the Willis Building, 51 Lime Street EC3 (tube: Liverpool Street or Bank).

They were made redundant because they could not change their hours as the company had demanded. Their colleagues were forced to switch from a part-time evening to full-time nocturnal shift, or resigned. Cleaning companies have been trying to enforce this change in a number of key locations in London. Typically it seems to happen just as they win the Living Wage, and key activists seem to suffer.

In this case it is the shop steward Edwin Pazmiro and three colleagues. The company’s latest tactic was a legal scare letter demanding they stop the protests. It hasn’t worked. Please bring anything visible (banners etc) and anything noisy!

30th march london forum: what unions do we have, and what do we need?

The next of The Commune’s ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums on “capitalism and the working class today” is on the subject of “what unions do we have, and what do we need?”

The meeting, taking place at the Lucas Arms near London’s King’s Cross from 7pm on Monday 30th, will be looking at the decomposition of the official labour movement in recent decades; the signs of revival of class struggle and the new forms of activism taking place among the casual workforce;  and the dynamics of rank and file and bureaucracy, and how we can empower self-organisation.

The speakers leading off the discussion will be John Moloney, a PCS activist in the Department for Work and Pensions; Fabien Liberski, Convenor and Health & Safety Officer in Southwark Council, who was victimised by his employer with the collusion of UNISON bureaucrats; and Alberto Einstein Durango, a cleaner activist who played an important role in the victory of cleaners at Schroders in the City of London and is now helping with the Mitie/Willis campaign in the face of resistance by the Unite union.

All are welcome to come and take part in the debate. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to register your interest or to find out more information. A map appears below.

the commune issue 3 – out now!

The March 2009 issue of The Commune is now on sale. £1 a copy, email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to order. Click here for pdf.

The new paper features the following articles:

Don’t moan, organise! – editorial on the recession

Factory occupation in Ukraine – by a comrade in Kyiv

Unions and left parties let down Greek youth uprising – by Valia Kaimaki

Lessons of the oil refinery wildcat strikes – by Gregor Gall

The impossibility of class struggle in the mind of the BBC – by Joe Thorne

Occupations for Gaza: activism goes back to university – by Taimour Lay

More arrests in Iran – by Sam Parsa

School students get organised – interview with Tali Janner-Klausner

Lassalle’s state socialism – from Hal Draper’s Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution

Self-management and the environment – by Steve Ryan

week of action to stop the ‘welfare abolition bill’: 7-15 march

by Joe Thorne

A coalition of grassroots organisations, including Feminist Fightback, the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network and London Coalition Against Poverty have called a week of action against the government’s plans for welfare ‘reform’.  You can find out more about the government’s plans, and about the perspective of the workers charged with administering them, here and here.

communists and elections

The following article appeared in The Socialist, official organ of the Socialist Labour Party, No.18,  May 6, 1920. The SLP was founded by Scots/Irish revolutionary James Connolly, and was influenced by the American Marxist Daniel De Leon. The SLP however was never as doctrinaire as the American SLP and they developed pioneering ideas of ‘communism from below’ and a strong critique of state-socialism that anticipated many of the problems of the 20th century and today. The following article is a contribution to the discussion on communist attitudes to elections and participation in institutions such as local authorities. The issues addressed in this revolutionary period are very much alive today, not least of all the familiar picture of rotten Labour councillors. This article also helps inform our own discussions on these issues in the 21st century.

Chris Kane

workplace organising conference 22nd march

The London Shop Stewards Network invites all workers, reps and activists to what we believe will be an interesting, relevant and useful event co-run with members of the Campaign Against Immigration Controls (CAIC), N&E London Solidarity Federation (SolFed) and the RMT Metronet workplace strike committee.

The conference will be made up of 3 sessions:

Rank & file organising ~ from workplace organising, setting up strike committees and running a successful dispute – Metronet RMT Reps

Migrant workers in struggle ~ resisting NI checks in the workplace – CAIC

Developing class consciousness & resistance in the workplace – SolFed

Sunday 22nd March – 10am to 3pm

Somerstown Community Centre

150 Ossulston Street London NW1 1EE

(5mins walk from the British Library Euston/Kings X)

like a winter with a thousand decembers

A piece by the Athens-based TPTG/Blaumachen taking a detailed look at the worker and youth protests which swept across Greece in December 2008.

Reflections on the recent unrest in Greece: “The rise of new organisational forms and contents of struggle is being discussed by all the insurgent elements”…