On Thursday 26th was held the second of this week’s demonstrations in the City of London in support of the cleaners working for Willis victimised by Mitie, and twenty people – including cleaner activists and their supporters – turned out and mounted a strong display of solidarity in spite of the Unite union’s failure to do anything to help them. See here for reports on previous protests and posts outlining the dispute.
Category: trade unions
by Chris Kane
National elections are underway in the civil service trade union PCS. In a twist of history an independent left candidate of rank and filist politics is standing against Hugh Lanning, for Deputy General Secretary. In 2000 the same Hugh Lanning was the candidate defeated by the then independent left candidate Mark Serwotka for General Secretary. Then the Trotskyist Socialist Party backed Lanning against Serwotka, demanding a re-count when he won! Today, the Socialist Party are again backing Lanning.
Hugh Lanning is painted as some kind of left candidate who stands up for workers – in reality he is a fake-left rightwing bureaucrat who should have been dumped when the old CPSA moderate group were defeated. The current hierarchy of the PCS – for all the militant language has failed to match the bosses’ offensive in the civil service with an effective strategy. Some of the leadership are simply politically bankrupt, careerist opportunists or both. Aloof and out of touch they are more at home with on a committee or with management than amongst the members. Much of the responsibility for what has gone wrong in PCS in the years since Serwotka’s victory has been the failure to build an effective rank and file movement and the bureaucratic antics of the Socialist Party, who have little resemblance even to their Socialist Party comrades outside of the Civil Service. Continue reading “pcs: vote for moloney – but independent rank and file action is the key”
report and photos by David Broder
A picket of the BMW-owned Mini factory in Cowley, near Oxford, was called for six o’clock this morning in response to last week’s sudden laying-off of 850 agency staff. The workers were informed that they had lost their jobs just one hour before the end of their last shift – provoking outrage at both management and the UNITE union, who colluded in keeping the affair a secret for the last three weeks. This sleight of hand was a blatant effort to stop workers effectively reacting to their redundancy, for example by occupying the plant as some workers suggested.
Today’s protest received a small degree of media coverage, after the widespread circulation last week of a video of workers confronting the union officials who had sold them down the river, such as site convenor Bernard Moss who told the Oxford Mail : “The problem we had was that we were under clear instruction we could not give out any information until the company said so. That caused a lot of concern from the workforce over the last couple of weeks. Although we are a trade union, we are employed by the company. If they give out an instruction, it would be a brave person to defy that. These days not many people would support a shop steward if he was sacked.” Clearly Moss has none too great an idea of the word ‘solidarity’ or the actual purpose of a trade union. Continue reading “protest by bmw/mini workers at cowley”
Frequent readers of The Commune may be surprised to read the above headline. In fact, we have not decided to abandon reappraising the communist project for a merger with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). But we do support workers victimised for organising at work, an increasingly common phenomenon nowadays.
Joseph Stalin Bermudez, branch chair of SOAS Unison is battling to keep his job. Stalin a key activist in the justice for cleaners campaign (see more information, including videos of Joseph speaking here) has been suspended and has his disciplinary hearing is on Tuesday.
A mass meeting of SOAS Unison has called for a lobby of the hearing and is calling on trade unionists to offer support. We want to get as many trade union banners and delegations as possible to this event.
Don’t let SOAS management victimise key activists!
9.30am, Tuesday 24 February, SOAS main building, Thornhaugh St, Russel Square
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)
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”…
by David Broder
On the evening of 13th February the Socialist Party and Respect Renewal held a joint meeting in London on the recent wildcat strikes by construction workers across Britain. Apparently the only significant meeting on the strikes taking place in the capital, the meeting was led off by Lindsey Oil Refinery strike committee member Keith Gibson (SP) and the left candidate for general secretary of the Amicus section of Unite, Jerry Hicks (RR). The meeting was a mix of interesting and informed commentary and sectarian jibes.
Speaking to a sixty-strong audience, Keith Gibson gave an interesting talk on the background to the dispute and how workers had argued that the strike was not a national or race issue, but one of class. The employer had sought to divide the workforce by keeping the Italian migrant workers on barges away from their local counterparts, and the media had played up the significance of nationalist elements, but he had been able to appeal to internationalist sentiment. When some people went to intimidate the Italian workers in the barges, strikers had broken up their demonstrations, while the BNP were chased off picket lines upon their arrival. Continue reading “report on oil refinery strikes meeting”
On Thursday 12th twenty people demonstrated outside the Willis insurance broker’s building in the City of London. Cleaners employed by Mitie, unfairly dismissed after protesting against being forced to work full time hours at night, were supported by cleaners from Schroders bank at the ‘unofficial’ demonstration.
Mitie cleaners, including Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Portuguese workers, were sacked from various workplaces when they objected to this change in their conditions, which happened with no consultation. At the protest a manager claimed that the cleaners “ought to have gone through the proper channels and spoken with human resources” – and yet one office worker, expressing his sympathy, told us that “Willis don’t allow us unions either”.
In a lively protest we chanted “Reinstate the cleaners” and “Queremos justicia ahora!”. Five City of London police briefly came to the protest, without incident. When they asked Roberto who was in charge of the demo, he replied “everyone!”. Unfortunately, “everyone” did not include the Unite union, who failed to organise the slightest support for their members in dispute.
The fight against victimisation continues – contact Edwin Pazmino on 07931464890, Juan Carlos Piedra on 07908099375, or williscleaners4justice@live.co.uk
In December 2006 the government’s National Physical Laboratory, contracted out its cleaning to Amey, a multimillion pound services provider. When they took over the contract there were 36, unionised Latin American cleaners earning £7 an hour. After an immigration raid and multiple sackings there are now 15, many of whom are on temporary contracts and only earning the minimum wage.
Julio and Pedro were sacked for trying to tell the other staff what was going on.
Contact: contact@caic.org.uk for more information and to get involved with the campaign for reinstatement.
There is an ‘unofficial’ (so far) cleaners’ demo, tomorrow Thursday 12th February at 13:00 pm outside Willis’s building at 51 Lime Street, London EC3M
This is a result of negotiations breaking down over the reinstatement of six Unite union activists who were made redundant on the spurious grounds that they could not alter their shift hours exactly as Mitie cleaning company demanded. The dispute is detailed here.
Still doesn’t look like Unite will be supporting them. Please bring placards, banners, whistles, megaphones and anything else that makes noise.
The protest is being supported by Schroders bank cleaners.
To confirm you’re coming, text or call Alberto 07803 634 319
The last winter has seen the biggest breakdown in the world financial system since the Great Depression, and the opening-up of what promises to be a deep and prolonged recession.
Banks have collapsed. Household names from Woolworths to Wedgwood have gone to the wall. The ideological dominance of the free-marketers and neoliberals has been swept away.
And yet few are challenging the real cause of the crisis – capitalism itself. The broadsheets write acres about Karl Marx, but in most Western countries the workers’ movement is not even fit to take a punch at the ruling class.
We will be discussing the composition of the global working class today, its relation
to the economic crisis and the prospects of uprooting this system. Speakers:
Kim Moody (leading figure in the American rank-and-file trade union publication
Labor Notes)
Andrew Fisher (Left Economics Advisory Panel)
7pm, Monday 16th February, Lucas Arms, nr. King’s Cross, London
by Dave Spencer
Jack Sprung was one of those militant shop stewards who were a feature in The Commune’s uncaptive minds series of meetings on the 1970s. He was a steward for many years at the Standard Triumph plant in Coventry, part of British Leyland. He was also a political activist, as a member of the Coventry Workers Association, a breakaway from the Communist Party.
Jack always claimed that shop stewards were a step on the way to workers’ control of the workplace. He was a fan of Mike Cooley, the initiator of the “Lucas Workers’ Corporate Plan”. The Lucas workers were threatened with the closure of their factory and worked out a plan where their skills and the machinery at Lucas could be used to build 150 socially useful products like kidney dialysis machines and a road-rail bus. They published their plan in 1976.
Unfortunately the capitalists decided that the shop stewards movement was too strong and decided to destroy it. In 1976 Jack was victimised during a bitter dispute where, according to the local paper, the workers were actually running the factory. He went to College and became a tutor in Industrial Relations throughout the West Midlands.After retiring he became the General Secretary of the British Pensioners and Trade Union Activist Association (BPTUAA). He was a supporter of Coventry Radical Network and attended our meetings right up to his final illness. Continue reading “obituary: jack sprung, 1922-2009”
an article on the refinery strikes by John McDonnell MP
Large numbers of workers taking spontaneous direct action have not only shocked this New Labour Government but have also disoriented some sections of the Left.
I have been off the scene largely because of the 3rd Runway announcement two weeks ago. When the Government announces that 10,000 members of your community are about to lose their homes and you are their MP you have a responsibility to focus your attention on their deep felt cares and concerns. So in the last couple of weeks I have thrown myself into organising meeting after meeting in my constituency, speaking to over 1500 people and contacting by various means nearly 20,000. Their response has been feelings of fear, insecurity, anxiety, anger and sheer determination to fight back. Continue reading “ten days that shook new labour”
600 workers, including hundreds of Polish workers, have walked out from Langage Power Station near Plymouth in solidarity with the wildcat actions sweeping across Britain.
When five hundred site staff had failed to arrive by 10am, the small minority of other foreign labourers (themselves also mostly Polish) who had been bussed in were sent home by management, deciding it was unsafe for them to work by themselves.
Jerry Pickford, regional officer for Unite South West, said workers had walked out in “general sympathy with what’s happening in the construction industry… all the Polish workers have walked out as well, because this is not an issue against foreign workers.
“This is an issue against foreign employers using foreign workers to stop British workers getting jobs. Once they do that they will try and undermine the terms and conditions of employment in this country.”
It would be illegal for the union to support the strike or even hold a ballot, but workers are taking action off their own backs. Today strike action also spread to the Sellafield nuclear plant, while 400 contractors at Scottish Power’s Longannet power station in Fife (along with 80 workers at an ExxonMobil plant there) and 130 at the Cockenzie Power Station extended their action until Friday.
