Poorly paid cleaners working at the prestigious Guildhall, home of the City of London Corporation, have won a major victory against their bosses, the sub-contractor Ocean Contract Cleaning Ltd, in an ongoing dispute over pay and working conditions.

The cleaners who are all members of the radical union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) took direct action on 15th July refusing to go into work, instead held a demonstration outside the building in the early morning, as a result not only did the company agree to pay all withheld back pay but have opened up collective bargain negotiations with the IWW.

Previously the workers raised a collective grievance with Ocean Contract Cleaning to review the salaries for the past six months. The company duly ignored the request and refused to participate in any collective bargaining process. As a result in June 34 cleaners employed by Ocean took two days of industrial action as many workers had failed to receive wages over the last three months. The company promised to pay the overdue wages by the 20th of June and so the dispute was suspended. However when the cleaners received their last pay packets, the company failed to keep their promises which resulted in the cleaners calling a new strike day for 15th July with a picket outside London Guildhall.

On the day itself 21 out of the 35 cleaning workforce were on strike arriving at 5.30am to picket outside their workplace. They were joined by cleaners from other sites, Colombian solidarity campaign, students and workers from University College London and SOAS, members of other unions including Unison and RMT as well as London IWW members. It was a lively event with workers shouting slogans, in Spanish and English, including “No pay, no work” and even the local priest turning up with offers of coffee and use of the church toilet to the strikers and their supporters.

After 8am two workers and two IWW union representatives were invited by the Guildhall management to negotiate inside with Ocean representatives eventually coming to a settlement after several hours with Ocean giving assurances about the unpaid wages. According to the IWW the best thing about this protest was the determination and unity of the workers – despite intimidation from managers they remained solid throughout.

The cleaners of Guildhall are on incredibly low pay rates, £5.95 per hour, whilst working in one of the most expensive cities in Europe and receiving no sick pay or pension. According to the London Living Wage Unit this is officially poverty pay as the London Living Wage has been set at £8.30. Alberto Durango, spokesperson for the cleaners said: “This is just the beginning of this struggle. The workers, currently paid the minimum wage, are determined to go on to fight for the living wage. Thanks to all who supported us, both at the protest and with solidarity messages”.

Article originally appeared in Freedom #7215
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The Industrial Workers of the World are unlike any other Union in the UK. We are a direct action, syndicalist (or “organising”) Union that is structured along the lines of a minimal hierarchy that is subject to the principles of direct democracy from local General Members Branches and Industrial Unions. These latter bodies are representative of specific employment sectors – Health, Education, Retail, Construction, Unemployed Workers and so on – nationwide. It is our belief that this type of organisation gives a greater power to workers in times of dispute than the more commonplace idea whereby Unions are obliged to negotiate within an individual workplace, with a single employer or at the level of a specific pay grade.

The IWW prides itself that it is wholly worker-focussed. While individual members may belong to a political party (or indeed another Union with political affiliations) the IWW has no party line. As we are outside the TUC we have a minimal bureaucracy; there are no paid positions in the IWW. We are run solely by activist members on a voluntary basis, and many of the administrative positions have a given time limit for any individual post holder. We are a fighting Union, and the majority of the membership dues are spent on campaigning and casework. As might be imagined this is an attractive proposition for many activists who have been frustrated by the seeming inactivity or slow top-heavy bureaucracies in many of the UK’s larger Unions. Unsurprisingly, we have recently had major increases in membership for exactly these reasons, including our IU640 “Cleaners’” Branch which disaffiliated itself from a major TUC Union to join the IWW en masse after the UBS “Justice for Cleaners” campaign in 2010.

This growth in membership has allowed the IWW to pursue legal certification, and in the next two months we will be in receipt of the Certificate of Independence which will allow us to negotiate collectively with employers. Increased numbers have also made it possible for the Union to decentralise its financial and training structures. Each branch, and some Industrial Unions, now command their own finances with the briefest of references to the National administration. Each of the regions, and many of the larger branches such as Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, London and Reading, have their own trainers who hold regular sessions across the country teaching representation and organising skills. Due to our close ties with the Latin American Workers Association (LAWAs) some of these sessions are now given in both English and Spanish. The IWW also provided an advice session on employment rights for an outreach project funded by the Ecuadorian Embassy. Our Healthworkers (IU610) and Education Sector (IU620) both produce regular newsletters with national distribution.

The international aspect of the IWW has been very prominent over the last year too; the British and Ireland Regional Administration has gained its autonomy from the historical base of the IWW in the USA. We are now “equals” and later this year the BIRA will be joined by IWW members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to form a European Administration.

We also retain good relations with sympathetic groups throughout Europe: last month the BIRA received a delegation from Courant Syndicaliste Revolutionnaire (CSR – Revolutionary Syndicalist Current, France); at the 2010 London Anarchist Bookfair the IWW held a debate with Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation (SAC – Central Organisation of Swedish Workers) and the Polish group Workers’ Initiative (IP – Inicjatywa Pracownica). This year members of the IWW

from Germany will be making a presentation on the Free University movement in conjunction with the Frei ArbeiterInnen-Union (FAU – Free Workers Union of Germany).

The IWW has also held a number of solidarity demonstrations for both the IP and SAC. Workers’ Initiative called us out to protest against the state closure of a metalwork foundry, a closure that was due to go ahead despite the workers’ offer to run it as a collective. The day after we picketed the Polish Embassy we received news that the Polish government was reconsidering its position. The IWW called a series of demonstrations outside 55 Baker Street, the offices of London and Regional who had inflicted a series of illegal working practises on the workforce at one of their Swedish subsidiary companies.

Of course the majority of the campaigns we are involved in are on a more local level. The Reading, Bristol and Nottingham GMBs are heavily involved with the “Save Our Services” anti-cuts campaign. West Midlands IWW joined forces with members of Unison and Unite and successfully lobbied to have a staff canteen opened at the new premises inhabited by the Birmingham NHS Blood and Transplant Centre. IU610 hosted the IWW’s first UK women’s conference last July; in the same month the Tyne and Wear branch participated in the Durham Miners Gala. This year marks the Scottish IWW Assembly hosted by the Edinburgh, Clydeside and Dumfries branches. Members of the London branch and IU640 successfully fought a removal order (for deportation) after one of the cleaners’ branch workers was picked up in a raid by the UK Border Agency – and in an example of solidarity in action donations for this campaign came from across the UK, from the German IWW and from Workers’ Initiative.

Many of our UK branch members will be marching alongside you today, so please feel free to introduce yourself if you are interested in our work. Otherwise please contact us at the addresses given in our advert.

http://iww.org.uk/

Article originally appeared in Freedom #7206
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The resilience of the workers, and the solidarity initiatives, went some way to embarrassing the bank and its hireling Lancaster into a settlement. The concessions started filtering through around the time of a protest in April.

Coming out of the campaign at UBS there have been some significant achievements, including the organisation of the dispute itself (which had an impressive international response with solidarity demonstrations carried out abroad). Since Unite the Union’s effective abandonment of the Justice for Cleaners campaign (initiated by Unite with the support of the Latin American Workers Association) it has been difficult for migrant cleaners to fight back against attacks on conditions, as displayed in the Willis and SOAS cleaners’ disputes in 2009, both of which ended in defeat. As the deportation of a cleaner at another UBS office shows, the employers, their state and the borders regime still have very powerful weapons against precarious migrant workers.

Despite the difficulty of workplace organising in the face of Unite’s refusal to take action, the UBS campaign meant a new type of organisation was needed. A cleaners’ branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Union has been established so that the workers can have their own autonomous organisation, and not need the permission of full time officials in the big business unions to fight back. Moreover the Cleaners’ Defence Committee, set up to organise solidarity protests, has proven successful in pulling together diverse forces around a radical cause – the intransigent defence of much-stigmatised precarious migrant workers.

From an Industrial Workers of the World Organiser

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Article orginally appeared in Freedom (Vol71 No20).
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The death of a worker on the massive Olympics 2012 construction site in East London forms the backbone of a new and damming report by Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union members, some of whom work on the site, exposing systematic breaches of basic health and safety, putting workers ‘at risk of injury and death’, as well as management cover-ups and deception.
Copies of the Report are available in the Bookshop for free or can be posted if you send in a pre-paid (61p 1st class, 47p 2nd class) SAE.

Shaun Scurry, 39, who worked for sub-contactors Firesafe as fire systems installer, was seriously injured at the beginning of December at the Stratford City section of the Olympics site, owned by multinational shopping developers Westfield. He later died in hospital to become the first fatality of the 2012 Olympic project. The cause of his death is still being investigated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

However, the report published by members of IWW who spoke to workers on site at the time of the incident reveals a catalogue of sub-standard health and safety work practices and management cover-ups. According to eye witness accounts immediately after the accident, and before the arrival of police and HSE – who are charged with investigating any serious accidents or injuries on site – management contractors, PC Harrington, closed the sector while they erected safety signs and fences, secured ladders and cleaned walkways in an attempt to cover up their own failings.

Once the police arrived, the Firesafe workers were sent home but, incredibly, the other workers in the sector were told to continue working, and were not informed of the true nature of the incident until several days later. This, the report claims, could have led to further serious risk of injury. Also in the report workers with direct knowledge state Shaun Scurry was working alone on a scissor lift without a second ground operator as required for safe working. It concludes that the controls to the lift were inadvertently activated crushing the worker against a steel beam.

Workers are angered at being left in the dark about the incident and the lack of respect shown by management for not closing the site while a proper investigation could take place. The report was also critical of the construction union UCATT whose officials failed to keep workers informed or investigate the accident themselves, even failing to attend on the day of the accident.

Construction is the countries biggest industry with over 2.2 million workers. It is also one of the most dangerous. In the last 25 years, over 2,800 people have died from injuries they received as a result of construction work. Many more have been injured or made ill.

A dozen or so activists hung a banner on the railings and leafleted the area in support of the sacked factory workers, who are also members of the Workers Initiative (Inicjatywa Pracownicza – IP, a Polish anrcho-syndicalist trade union.

The Polish workers asked for support for five IP activists sacked in October for organising in the workplace, along with an end to the repression against trade union activity, an end to the redundancies and negotiations to resolve all outstanding demands.

The Cegielski plant is one of the most famous plants in Poland; it was founded in 1846 and continues to manufacture maritime engines and parts. At its height in mid 1970s it employed over 20,000 workers, which today is reduced to just 2,800. IP have been active in the plant since the late 1990s and orchestrated a strategy of ‘plyta’ (‘platform/ square’) a form of wildcat strike.

An agreement was signed on 25th November 2009, by the Workers’ Initiative and the factory owners ending the dispute, and the five IP-activists, who had been illegally fired earlier, are set to return to work. The owners also recognised the union protection for the five activists. The IP have agreed to suspend protests while the management promised not to make further redundancies.