Brighton SolFed

Pell and Bales is a London call centre that raises funds on behalf of major charities. Since a venture capital company, ICENI, bought shares in P&B, the volume of calls staff must make has increased.

This added pressure led to friction between management and staff, and an increase in petty disciplinary actions and grievances.

Pat Carmody, a caller and CWU rep at Pell & Bales, helped build a fast-growing union that won a pay increase for the first time in 6 years and is capable of winning disciplinaries and grievances. Senior management were none too pleased.

In June, Carmody was suspended for writing an article for Socialist Worker in defence of a suspended colleague. Management claimed the article defamed the company and suspended him.

In June 2008 a solidarity picket outside of Pell & Bales’ office was called, attended by supporters, including workers from Shelter, the Solidarity Federation and the London Coalition Against Poverty.

He was sacked on the 21st June, but won his appeal and was reinstated with back pay on the 22nd July. However, he did receive a final written warning and management intend to rewrite the text of the staff handbook to reinforce their control of press relations.

If we are to defend our rights to freedom of speech and stop the victimisation of active union members, then we must repeat such acts of solidarity.

London tube cleaners have won crucial pay increases from cleaning companies, with their £5.50 an hour poverty wages being brought up to £7.45.

Cleaners on Metronet contracts were granted the ‘ London living wage’ in July through a wider initiative whilst those working for ISS (contracted by Tubelines) won a staggered pay rise in pre-strike negotiations in August.

With the 48hour RMT strike in June/July and the planned three day strike in August forcing the hand of ISS, the cleaners have demonstrated their strength and gained from it. However, their fight is far from over with the strike committee continuing to meet in pursuit of unmet demands - more holidays, better sick pay, a decent pension and an end to the scandal of ‘third party sackings’.

With more strikes in the pipeline, lessons need to be learned if more gains are to be made. In the first strike T&G/Unite balloted late and didn’t join, making it less effective. The strike could also have been more successful if RMT cleaners had not been told to finish their shifts if they ended after the strike had begun, instead of all walking out together. This left workers isolated and open to pressure from management. A tougher obstacle has been ISS suspending strikers without pay on the grounds that there are irregularities with their NI numbers. Not only are these the same NI numbers they have always used, bringing the timing of the suspensions into question, but non-strikers have merely been asked to provide the documents without being suspended. These are clear cases of victimisation and examples of how immigration controls are used directly by companies seeking to profit from insecure, cheap labour to discipline their workforce and prevent it from improving its lot. Outsourcing and this kind of business practice go hand in hand.

The unions need a strategy for defending their members from this kind of attack. In this instance the RMT were slow to defend their suspended members where they could have got prompt and supportive legal advice and representation from immigration solicitors. The RMT is, however, pursuing a strategy of tackling outsourcing, first by seeking to bring workers’ conditions up to the standard of London Underground staff. They have already won the victory over post-Transfer recruits to Metronet after being brought back in-house.

Following our piece on tips in the last issue, The Independent launched a campaign on the same issue. They didn’t credit either us or the trades unions, which have been campaigning on the issue much longer.

This newspaper campaign seems to have had some effect, however. “Government insiders” now claim they will address the issue in the autumn. More significantly, a prominent “Old” Labour figure has admitted delivering restaurant workers into the hands of their exploiters when drafting minimum wage legislation in 1997.

Ian McCartney, ex-trades union official and token ex-prole in the government, admitted that he sold out workers to ensure the agreement of bosses to the minimum wage. While this ex-waiter banned the use of cash tips to top up the minimum wage, he agreed to a legal loophole allowing catering bosses to use “service charges” for the same purpose.

In spite of the massive “electoral mandate” enjoyed by his government, he was more committed to getting the agreement of bosses than he was to helping vulnerable workers. In the end, lobbying by the “catering industry” counted for more than votes. Democracy in a nutshell!

London tube cleaners have won crucial pay increases from cleaning companies, with their £5.50 an hour poverty wages being brought up to £7.45.

Cleaners on Metronet contracts were granted the ‘ London living wage’ in July through a wider initiative whilst those working for ISS (contracted by Tubelines) won a staggered pay rise in pre-strike negotiations in August.

With the 48hour RMT strike in June/July and the planned three day strike in August forcing the hand of ISS, the cleaners have demonstrated their strength and gained from it. However, their fight is far from over with the strike committee continuing to meet in pursuit of unmet demands - more holidays, better sick pay, a decent pension and an end to the scandal of ‘third party sackings’.

With more strikes in the pipeline, lessons need to be learned if more gains are to be made. In the first strike T&G/Unite balloted late and didn’t join, making it less effective. The strike could also have been more successful if RMT cleaners had not been told to finish their shifts if they ended after the strike had begun, instead of all walking out together. This left workers isolated and open to pressure from management. A tougher obstacle has been ISS suspending strikers without pay on the grounds that there are irregularities with their NI numbers. Not only are these the same NI numbers they have always used, bringing the timing of the suspensions into question, but non-strikers have merely been asked to provide the documents without being suspended. These are clear cases of victimisation and examples of how immigration controls are used directly by companies seeking to profit from insecure, cheap labour to discipline their workforce and prevent it from improving its lot. Outsourcing and this kind of business practice go hand in hand.

The unions need a strategy for defending their members from this kind of attack. In this instance the RMT were slow to defend their suspended members where they could have got prompt and supportive legal advice and representation from immigration solicitors. The RMT is, however, pursuing a strategy of tackling outsourcing, first by seeking to bring workers’ conditions up to the standard of London Underground staff. They have already won the victory over post-Transfer recruits to Metronet after being brought back in-house.

Higher Education faces significant changes in the coming years as universities move to a market based model. Tuition and top-up fees are perhaps the more visible signs of this but many institutions are now seeing changes which, among other things, significantly affect education workers’ terms and conditions. Union responses so far have seen conferences like NUS’s (National Union of Students) ‘Reclaim the Campus’ and UCU’s ‘Challenging the market in education’ (University and College Union)

Meanwhile, the more action-minded have been far from quiet. The Universities of Sussex and Manchester, for example, both saw occupations, demonstrations and demands to end this commercialisation process. In both cases, while the impetus for action has come from student activists, university workers have also been involved. In Sussex, the ‘Sussex not 4 Sale’ campaign organised the largest rally in Brighton for 20 years.

In Manchester members of the SF’s Education Workers’ Network have been involved in the ‘Reclaim the Uni’ campaign which organised a march and occupation and put together a list of demands, several of which related to staff issues.

Meanwhile, commercialisation continues apace at Manchester. The introduction of an internal market is bringing about a situation where each building has devolved decision making. Though they use university support staff at the moment there is no reason why work cannot be outsourced and, in the case of one new building complex, private night time security staff are to be used. Also the no compulsory redundancy agreement runs out later this year. Although there have already been upwards of 800 voluntary redundancies, with the university still massively in debt because of its dash for ‘world class university’ status and with an expected squeeze on public spending there are growing concerns that compulsory redundancies are a distinct possibility.

While it has been encouraging to see university staff and students beginning to come together to oppose the current neoliberal climate in universities, it is going to require much more of the same to reverse the flow of change. It is to be hoped that these positive moves can re-gather momentum as soon as the summer break is over.