- Low-paid and migrant members of the United Voices of the
World (UVW) union have voted to strike at nine different
workplaces across London after returning a resounding Yes vote in
ballots released today (22 May)
- Workplaces involved in the dispute include billion-pound
global giants Amazon and Mercedes-Benz, as well as the
prestigious London School of Economics, and private and state
schools in South London, Government buildings and luxury
flats
- Dates in June for simultaneous and coordinated strike action
across London and the South East, for improved pay and working
conditions, will be announced next week
- This is set to be UVW’s biggest coordinated industrial action
to date as members join the current strike wave across the
private and public sectors.
Cleaners, carers and concierge workers, UVW members across the
public and private sectors, have returned a massive mandate to
strike for dignity, equality and respect.
The low-paid, Black, brown and migrant workers are joining forces
across the following nine workplaces; an Amazon warehouse, a
Mercedes-Benz showroom, London School of Economics, Streatham and
Clapham private school, La Retraite state school, Sage Nursing
home, the Department for Education, luxury apartments West End
Quays and media powerhouse Ogilvy at the Sea Containers’
building.
Among the demands, the workers want a pay rise to cope with the
increased cost of living. In some cases they are asking for a
modest increase to the London Living Wage (LLW) of £11.95 per
hour, such as at Amazon and Mercedes, which both behemoths have
astonishingly refused, while some are demanding £13 and even £15
an hour. Others are asking for their lawful entitlement to annual
leave pay and amended contracts which is being denied such as at
the LSE; at Streatham and Clapham School the cleaners are calling
for full sick pay and an end to outsourcing; and in the
Department for Education the workers are demanding parity with
civil service benefits while in other sites the workers are
resisting detrimental changes to the timetable.
UVW members work early in the morning and through the night so
that students, teachers, academics, sales people, office workers
and civil servants can live, study and work in clean and safe
spaces. They deserve dignity, equality and respect.
Magaly Quesada Herrera, a UVW member and cleaner
at La Retraite, said:
“As a general rule the vast majority of cleaners get up between
4am and 5am. We have to work at least 10 hours a day to
barely make ends and tend to work several jobs of 1-2 hours. The
jobs are in different places which means we are on the streets
for approximately 12 to 14 hours a day, eating many times in
buses, far from our families and with hardly any rest. On many
occasions our only contact with our children is during the week
and over mobile phone.”
José Francisco Mora Varón, UVW member and cleaner
at Amazon Warehouses said:
“For those workers that are not yet union members; I recommend
that you join the struggle. Do not allow fear to defeat you.
Don’t keep quiet. This is the strategy that companies use to make
us believe that they are in the right, so that we let ourselves
be trampled on and so that we let ourselves be pressured. We
might not be working in handcuffs or shackles. But
psychologically companies try to put pressure on us, they try to
shackle us, so as workers we do not claim our rights. We don't
have to tolerate or allow any kind of bullying, any kind of
exploitation or any kind of ‘modern day slavery’. To those
workers that are already union members, don't let your bosses
divide you, don't be afraid of losing your job because at the end
of the day in almost every company in the UK the same thing is
happening.”
Kadijatu Jalloh, UVW member and cleaner at the Department
for Education, said:
“We are all frustrated and we are overworked, our demands are
just and fair. They don’t talk to us right, they talk to us like
children. We are parents, we have grandchildren, we have the
right to be respected so we have come together as one. Just
because I am a cleaner and they sit down in their offices it does
not make them better than us or more important than us. When we
strike they will know and see how important we are.”
Petros Elia, general secretary for UVW,
said:
“The majority of our strikers are outsourced to third-party
companies, which pay them poverty wages with the silent
complicity of their very wealthy clients. It’s a disgrace that
multinationals like Amazon or Mercedes-Benz make billions in
profit on the backs of precarious, migrant and majoritarily Black
and brown workers, while spouting moral values of equality,
diversity and inclusion. UVW is at the cutting edge of a defiant,
growing insurgent movement in which workers refuse to be
disrespected, undervalued and invisible any more. Our UVW members
will be reminding everyone on the picket line that enough is
enough. We call on the union movement to join them in their fight
for justice, dignity and respect.”
