Marginal Notes is back! We’re asking for your support for two events this Wednesday, plus some other news…
1. Courier strike:
Medical couriers at The Doctors Laboratory are on strike on Wednesday from 1000-1300 over redundancies targeting IWGB union activists and safety concerns. One of the activists Alex Marshall spoke at our Constituency Labour Party last year.
Please support by joining the virtual picket line here
Join the West London Unite Community branch this Wednesday at 11am to discuss how unions and the community respond to this attack on livelihoods of local workers. Guests include MPs John McDonnell and Ruth Cadbury plus union reps. All welcome.
To register contact Raj Gill 07983 977775 or Mulkesh Malhotra 07757 675979
How are foodbanks coping in Lockdown? Watch Labour and union activists from Hounslow and elsewhere reflect on their experiences in this special edition of the Stay Home for Labour show.
End Heathrow Immigration Detention held a well-attended public meeting in Hounslow just before lockdown to oppose plans to build a new ‘mega’ immigration removal centre. It was addressed by campaigners, councillors and ex-detainees. Check out the latest on the campaign here
The current Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres
Britain’s ‘immigration removal centres’ are notorious for the abuse that goes on inside them. According to the End Heathrow Immigration Detention (EHID) campaign, nine detainees died between 1989 and 2017 at the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres just outside the airport, making them the deadliest across the UK detention system. Other issues reported from these centres include self-harm, abuse by staff and indefinite detention. Most of those deported on the recent and widely criticised charter flights to Jamaica were held there.
Now we have a government set on building the biggest prison for migrants ever to punish those whose only crime is to escape catastrophic climate change, persecution and conflict, or the negative effects of an unfair globalised economy which creates the demand for their labour with one hand but criminalises their movement with the other.
Our friends, workmates, neighbours and family without the ‘correct’ immigration papers end up in these places by getting caught during Home Office raids on workplaces, shops and homes. The Home Office vans we see out on the streets patrol our workspaces and neighbourhoods just as dog wardens patrolled our living spaces in the past, and they catch people in an equally demeaning manner. But as we have previously reported, they have also been faced down, including locally in Hounslow
Migrants are also caught out by checks when they try to get a job, rent a flat, see a doctor or get married. Public sector workers and landlords are thus turned into Home Office spies. Others are required to sign regularly at reporting centres and are then nabbed one day as they do so.
In London many of those caught are then locked up in Western Europe’s largest prison for migrants: the Harmondsworth Removal Centre, which houses 676 detainees and is conveniently located next door to Heathrow Airport. Its twin next door, Colnbrook, brings the total to over 1,000.
The new prison – Europe’s largest immigration detention centre
The new 1,060-place mega-prison will replace these two centres, which will be cleared to make way for the controversial expansion of the airport with a third runway. It will be built on fields bounded by Faggs Road, Hatton Road and the Duke of Northumberland’s River. For those of in local boroughs such as Hounslow, Hillingdon and Spelthorne, this is a local issue.
The site of what will be Europe’s largest immigration detention centre
We’ve yet to see exactly where Labour’s next leader stands on the issue of immigration controls. And indeed, how far they’ll allow members to influence party policy in this field. In 2019 members passed a motion at the Labour Party’s annual conference in support of defending and extending free movement – thus removing the need to detain people. But it was not included in the manifesto, which limited itself to ending indefinite detention and some of the worst excesses of the immigration rules
Either way, if we wait until another election the new Heathrow detention camp will have been built already. After Brexit migrants will continue to be blamed for the country’s problems, and EU citizens arriving after 2020 will add to the number of “illegal workers.” The media will demand to ‘lock them up’ and the government will respond by proudly pointing to new detention centres.
What we can do to stop this
Hounslow and the surrounding areas have a proud history of resisting immigration controls and standing up for migrant rights – we remember for example the opposition in the 1970s to ‘virginity tests’ at the airport and the role of the Indian Workers Association, as recounted in this excellent documentary. We now need to stop this new monstrosity in its tracks. End Heathrow Immigration Detention (EHID) is a new campaign which has been set up to help do just that, working with local residents and workers. What you can do to support:
Support the public meeting on Friday 28 February at 7pm at St Mary’s Church Hall, Hatton Road Bedfont.
Invite an EHID speaker to your trade union meeting
There’s a ‘common sense’ wisdom that skilled workers in new industries don’t unionise. Old school steel workers do. App-driven couriers, like at Deliveroo or Uber Eats, do. But the people who produce the apps that drive them … well, that’s a different story.
Except it isn’t. The Tech Worker’s Coalition, whose focus is on organising white-collar workers in this sector, is getting busy in the UK doing just that.
The Tech Worker’s Coalition was started in the US for workers within the tech industry who were unhappy with how the products of their labour were being used. Whereas in traditional industrial production, commodities require labour and capital input each time they are produced, the product of a software developer’s labour (in the form of code, for example) can be reproduced an infinite number of times without new inputs required each time. Tech sector workers found the products of their labour being used in industries as wide–ranging as controlling drones or border security. The TWC saw their numbers soar following the election of Donald Trump, with members holding themselves responsible for developing the platforms that enabled the proliferation of fake news and far-right talking points.
Blue and white-collar crossover
TWC aim to organise across blue & white collar intersections.
The TWC was started by a labour organiser, a cafeteria worker and an engineer, and an important goal for the organisation is to build solidarity between workers whose pay-scales and working conditions vary greatly. Although white collar workers (software engineers, backend developers etc) cross paths with blue collar workers (such as cleaners and cafeteria workers) all the time, it is important to build solidarity across these intersections of labour. A vital part of this process is utilising the workers’ inquiry methods that combines organising with the knowledge of those involved with the production process.
The combination of traditional research “from above” and involving workers in the production of knowledge “from below” is vital because white collar workers tend to have an individualised outlook of the world. This leads to individual solutions based on consumption (avoiding plastic bags to reduce your carbon footprint for instance) or tokenistic changes (more minority representation on boards). Allowing workers to identify issues and providing them with the theoretical tools to link them together as systemic issues that need systemic solutions is the key to raising consciousness of class across sectors that are often regarded as distinct and with no crossover.
Part of this lack of crossover is due to the significantly different working conditions of most tech workers compared to many blue-collar workers. The tech sector is unique in the perks it provides its employees with. Recreational facilities, subsidised bars, in-house restaurants, and even bedrooms, have converted the traditional office set up into sprawling campuses with the implicit idea that employees never really have to leave. Forcing employees to install apps on phones and computers that can monitor internal calendars is a common method for rooting out potential troublemakers. A much larger workforce of cleaners, waiters and porters is needed to maintain these facilities, working without perks for longer hours and often on precarious contracts. Tech workers command high wages relative to other industries due to the limited number of them. This is rapidly changing. There has been a shift towards encouraging children to code from young ages, which will eventually create a reserve army of labour to depress worker bargaining power and wages alike.
London calling
The London chapter of the TWC started up fairly recently. As well as workers’ inquiry sessions, TWC runs learning labs where tech workers can learn about their rights within the workplace. Discussions can include the sharing of workplace experiences as well as focussing on specific issues (for example the staff walkout at IGN over workplace harassment), all with the aims of developing actions and building systematic critiques of the industry. With an eye at linking up workers who create tech solutions with those who use technology as part of their jobs, London TWC has more in common with the smaller more dynamic unions such as the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) than the more established, bureaucratically dense unions.
Deliveroo workers strike for a minimum hourly wage.
Recent years have seen a wave of reaction against changes in pay structures for workers in the platform–based economy (Deliveroo being a well-documented example). These are the intersections between white and blue-collar workers that the Tech Workers’ Coalition has the potential to provide valuable interventions within. As with the US chapters, London TWC have no formal membership structure with no dues paid. Instead they are an all-volunteer organisation where membership consists of simply turning up to meetings. Most refreshing is a willingness to encourage memebers to get involved by joining or starting autonomous working groups that form the active work of the chapter. Meetings are collaborative and informal. A TWC member phrased it this way: “It’s still early days, we’re very much raising awareness still, but I’ve seen more progress in the past six months organising with TWC than I had seen made from the rank-and-file of a ‘traditional’ union in 3 or 4 years. There are no unelected officials frustrating members’ efforts, nobody at TWC will waste your time with promises of support and not deliver. We show up for each other and those less fortunate than us.” And in that spirit, if you work in or around the tech industry we encourage you to get involved with the Tech Workers’ Coalition!
The next London TWC meeting is on Thursday, 20 February at 18.30, at 15 Old Ford Rd,E2 9PJ
Here we go – a few short weeks to kick out the Tories.
As we enter a general election, it’s worth noting that the struggle of precarious workers isn’t a sideshow to what’s going on in Westminster but should be central to the broader labour movement’s aims, and making that clear in an election campaign is one clear way of demonstrating that Labour is for the 99%.
As we write this, we’ve yet to see what the manifesto has to say on workers’ rights, but we already know that the party is committed to abolishing zero hour contracts, and many leading figures have said repeatedly that they’re in favour of rolling back Thatcher era anti-union laws. And the party took a strong position in favour of freedom of movement and migrant rights at this September’s conference. So hopes are high.
Low-paid workers haven’t been waiting around for the great and the good to hand them their rights on a plate, though. There has been an acceleration of struggles over the past few months, only some of which we can cover here. This time round we’ve got features and interviews ranging from the situation of contract building workers to wrestlers. Yes, wrestlers. Read on. But rather than give a summary here (just follow the links), we thought we’d use this editorial to look at this trend in a broader context.
Going global
It’s worth noting here the link between Marginal Notes’ focus – the situation and organisation of precarious workers – and the global resistance that has erupted from Hong Kong to Beirut over the past few months and is still building up momentum. As one commentator in the Guardian recently put it: “The majority of those protesting now are the children of the financial crisis – a generation that has come of age during the strange and febrile years after the collapse of a broken economic and political orthodoxy, and before its replacement has emerged.
“One direct impact of the crash has been a rapid diminishment of opportunity for millions of young people in rich countries – who now regard precarious work and rising inequality as the norm. At the same time, the aftermath of the crash has cracked the entrenched structures that had evolved to detach citizens from active participation in politics – be that through authoritarian systems or via an institutional consensus on the inevitability of market logic and technocratic management. Amid widespread economic and social failure, it has become harder than ever for elites to justify power, even on their own terms.” We couldn’t have put it better (hence the lengthy quote).
Reboot
Back in 2012, left-wing journalist Paul Mason wrote an analysis on the uprisings of the previous year, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere. This looks like being Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere – The Reboot.
In the UK, we’ve seen intermittent – and frequently successful – industrial action by precarious workers, whether they be organised in traditional unions (McDonalds strikers in the Bakers’ Union or TGI Fridays in Unite, for example) or new unions (Deliveroo campaigns organised by the IWGB or outsourced cleaners in UVW). Last summer saw many of these link arms in a coordinated wave of action, which was the inspiration for us launching Marginal Notes. However, this hasn’t yet ignited into a broader social conflagration, as it has elsewhere. The UK’s inspirational mass protests, in the form of XR, have still to see a distinct working-class input.
But the dynamic is similar – the tinder is dry. And the numbers impacted are growing.
In 2017, the number of workers estimated to be on zero hours contracts varied between about 900,000 and 1.8m, rising from about 100,000 at the start of the decade. The Office of National Statistics’ more conservative forecast now has that as just under 3% of the workforce. The broader impact of austerity is that 14.3m people are in poverty in the UK. Of these, 8.3m are working-age adults, and 4.6m are children. Around 22% of people are in poverty, and 34% of children are. This isn’t an abstract statistic. All of us will know some – perhaps many – people in this situation, if we’re not in it ourselves. And those that aren’t are generally only one P45 or a workplace restructure away.
The point with many precariat workers – from couriers to cleaners – is that they’ve fought back, and frequently won. Often young, diverse and with a greater percentage of women than the total workforce, they’ve shown how passion, creativity and, above all, organisation, can win through against what looks like overwhelming odds.
They don’t want sympathy, they want solidarity and fundamental change. As Labour activists in the largest – and arguably most radical – party in Europe, we need to be in a position to provide that.
Paul Couchman: My name’s Paul Couchman. And I’m the secretary of Save Our Services in Surrey.
Ed Moore: Thanks Paul, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
PC: I left school when I was 16 years old and I went on to British Rail as it was then. I became a shop steward for the NUR, National Union of Railway Men as it was then when I was 17, I think. I participated in the ‘84/’85 miner’s strike, providing lots of support and did collections on a high street for the miners. I was secretary of Feltham and Heston Labour Party Young Socialists branch for a good number of years. I was constituency delegate to Labour party in Feltham and Heston and National Union of Railway Men, as well. I was expelled from the Labour Party, unfortunately in the early nineties, due to the decision to expel people from the Militant Tendency, which I was a part of. But I’ve been in Unison and active in Unison, the public sector trade union since the year 2000 in Surrey. And I’d been branch secretary for Surrey Unison of about 5,000 members within, Surrey, for about 12 years.
EM: Would you say you are supportive of the current Labour party?
PC: I am a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, but I’m not afraid to say when I think he should do things differently. I always, I think, I think good socialists, good trade unions, should be critical friends, not, not just flag waivers. I think we should always say yes, we’re in support, but perhaps it can be done… If you are seeing this, you know, we always speak up is what I say. But yes, I’m a support of Jeremy Corbyn and to be honest this is, it hasn’t been discussed as a, a policy of Save Our Services, I’m speaking personally but I’m pretty sure the majority would support it, that what is needed right at this moment in time is for the trade union leadership to get behind Jeremy Corbyn fully to call a massive demonstration demanding a general election now, because all this Brexit stuff, all of that, it just looks like shadowboxing and game playing. The average person, the average worker in a trade union is fed up the teeth, whether they were remainders or whether they are leavers. And what they want is to see the hospitals put back in order once the transport links and schools back to being funded, all those things, the gig economy to be sorted out. That’s what they want to see. That’s not going to happen unless we get different government.
EM: Could you tell us a bit about what the goal of Save Our Services in Surrey is?
PC: Well, in terms of a goal, I suppose the end goal would be a better sort of society, more socially sort of society. That’s, that would be a goal. But our main role is to organize defence of public services. And that includes any public services; it includes public sector workers, includes jobs, conditions, pay… anything to do with public services at all. If there’s an opportunity for us to support people fighting back to defend public services and then we’ll be there.
EM: So that will be not just in Surrey of course.
PC: No, but obviously we are locally based. We are Save Our Services in Surrey. Obviously these days there are very few public services that are not fragmented and broken up locally anyway. So even like the [national] health service, we’ve been on the health service’s marches and national things, all those kinds of things. But when they make a cut, it’s a cut to the local hospital. So it’s still a salary based thing.
EM: You said you’re based locally. What was the local event that sparked the creation of Save Our Services in Surrey?
PC: It was the forthcoming election in 2010. So, in 2009, we knew that there was going to be an issue about cuts we expected at Tory victory and we thought there need to be a fight back. So we got the trade unions together and about 40 people from seven or eight trade unions that came together and a few individuals outside the trade unions. And we met in Guilford in 2009 and we establish Save Our Services in Surrey. And we were proved right and the austerity began in 2008, but the with a, a vengeance. It was when the Lib Dems and the Conservative came into power.
EM: Who were the unions that started Save Our Services in Surrey?
PC: When we first set up, there was Unison, the GMB, the civil servants, PCS, the railway workers (the RMT) and one other, which was the Fire Brigade’s Union.
EM: Now I know in particular the Fire Brigade’s Union has been very active in Egham and Surrey, in general because of the closure off for fire stations, would you say this is one of the key campaigns you have at the moment?
PC: Yes, definitely one of our major campaigns. And because the way we work, we support campaigns that exist. We don’t necessarily initiate them. We’re not big enough. We’ve got a network which spreads hugely, but the actual activists is very, very small number. So, when the Fire Brigade’s union decided they’re gonna [sic] fight back against the cuts and the local residents decided they’re going to support them, then we get involved with that. And we have been fighting five service cuts almost since we started. I led a March through Spelthorne from Sunbury fire station to Staines fire station in 2013 when they wanted to close the two of them and we managed to hold off those closures for a whole period of time. Unfortunately, they have closed now and there was a new Ford bridge station although that’s not too regularly staffed, so clearly cuts are going on. But at the moment it is probably the most public profile campaign that’s going on and that is the threats are seven pumps basically at night and seven stations would be without cover at night if they get away with this.
EM: What would be the effects of these fire stations closing at night?
PC: Well no one can predict because if there were no fires there’d be no outcome, they get away with it. The reality is that there are loads of fires at night that the most recent fires they’ve had to have cover from London that’s come in and from Hampshire that come in, cause we don’t have enough pumps already available in Surrey that are fully staffed. So, if they reduce that cover even more then the reality is response times will be slower and people will die eventually. That’s the outcome if there are fires at night in the areas where they’ve made the cuts, then there is every possibility that people’s lives will be at risk and that will mostly be the most vulnerable people in society as well: Older people, disabled people, et cetera, who need a quick, a quick response to support them to get on the building.
EM: Now, some on the right may argue that they are doing this to balance budgets and they’re necessary to keep multiple fire stations open. And make the argument about that protects more lives than keeping them open at night when they haven’t got the money. What is your response to those sorts of arguments?
PC: We’ve never accepted the balance budget argument. The very bottom level there is more than enough money in society. It’s swimming with money, British spirit, British capitalism, British society has incredible resources; it’s just in the wrong place. So
therefore, the idea that we have to balance the books in public services, we have to make cuts in health, education, fire services, et cetera, our social care, because there’s not enough money, the reality is the money’s there, but it’s in the wrong hands. And we would argue that that needs to be rectified. And in terms of what we call for and it’s quite clear in our charter and it’s actually at that we’ll be celebrating on Monday it’ll be the funeral of someone called Tony Mulhern, if you’ve heard of Tony Mulhern.
EM: Could you briefly describe who Tony Mulhern is?
Tony Mulhern was the deputy leader in Liverpool city council in the 1980s when they took on Margaret Thatcher and the Tory government and won extra resources for the council. They refused to make cuts basically. And they got the trade unions in the council to support them. They got the public in Liverpool to support them. There was 150,000 people marched in the streets of Liverpool to support their council. Not many councils will get that sort of turned out to support them. Very recently, literally only week or so ago who’s passed away. But his funeral’s on Monday and people are going from all over the country. I’m going up to Liverpool as well to talk to honour his memory. But I mean that’s aside. But Save Our Services in Surrey believes that if, for instance, if you’re a Labour councillor or Green councillor, if you profess to be progressive, then you shouldn’t make cuts. It’s as simple as that. If you want to get into the argument where there’s not enough money, then make a stand, say to the government, you need to get this council more money. Otherwise we’re going to go, you know, you’ve got to put it to the wire. Otherwise, what’s the point? What makes you different to Tory or Lib Dem, is a labour cut kind of cut?
EM: How have you been fighting against these cuts to the fire service?
PC: It’s a mixture of tactics really. And we’ll try anything. Nothing is, nothing is ruled out that is within the law. We have had lobbies of the council, we’ve had marches. We’ve done petitions. The latest petition was the second highest number of signatures that’s ever been handed in to Surrey Council through their websites, 13’050 signatures. Which causes a difficulty actually because we expected a lot of signatures, but we didn’t expect over 10,000. When you go over 10,000, you get a chance to speak to the full council. If you get over a thousand, you get a chance to speak to cabinet. So, we’d planned a major lobby of the council cabinet, and the full council was two weeks later. So, we had our massive lobby two weeks before we got the chance
to speak to the, the petition. But it was still good. We had two major events, made them squirm. So yes, public media, leafleting. The firefighters had been incredible. They put leaflets almost every door, particularly in the North and West of Surrey. And the latest, and probably the highest point, now in the tactics is the Fire Brigade’s union is balloting their members on industrial action over the cuts which will take things to another level, really. We have supported other industrial action before. We’ve supported the railway workers fighting to save guards on the trains. We’ve been down to their picket lines to support them, the RMT locally is very supportive of Save Our Services in Surrey. And we would support any group of workers on strike.
EM: Well, so now that was of course a vote at Surrey County council, which is, which has the authority for the entire county, which is the one making the decision over this I believe.
PC: Yes. Surrey County council, who runs the Surrey fire authority. The cabinet made the decision and that council rubber stamped it. Interestingly, some people say to us, why do you stipulate Labour and Green and Socialist candidates and councillors in terms of who you approach the charter, et cetera. And why don’t you go to the Lib Dems? Lib Dems abstained over these cuts. Lib Dems were in government when austerity started. That’s why we don’t go to the Lib Dems. Individuals from any party, Tories included, come be involved in Save Our Services in Surrey, but we don’t include them as a progressive party. And that was shown. So, the vote was four to one in the council to carry out these cuts with the Lib Dems abstaining. And it was only the Labour, the Green and a handful of independent residence associations councillors that voted against it. The cuts.
EM: With this unfortunate loss in the County council, what do you see as the next steps?
PC: Well the next step is the Fire Brigade’s union ballot. If their ballot is successful and then they go back to the council and say they are going to take action, whether it’s strike action or ever kind of action they decide to take, and the council doesn’t back down, then Save Our Services role at that point will be to support them on their picket lines, and to publicly promote the, the industrial action that they’re taking and get public support for that.
EM: You’ve mentioned a charter. We’ve got not accepting cuts as one of the principles of this charter. Are there other principles?
PC: Off the top of my head, you’d be catching me, but they’re all on the website, sosis.org.uk, anybody can find the details on there. But we’re basically opposed to privatization in any form outsourcing in any form. It was a slight amendment made to the charter recently this year. We say that if workers want to set up their own co-op then we wouldn’t put that in the same bracket but forced cooperatives or forced outsourcing to charities and the community sector are all cuts, as far as we’re concerned, they’re all privatization. There isn’t a kinder face. In fact, some of the charities have got the worst employment records and you know, any organizations because they use the excuse that we haven’t got enough money, we’re just a charity, therefore we’ve got pay, you pay for wages and you’ve got to do it out of love rather than out of money. So we think all public services should be publicly run, publicly managed and publicly owned. And probably was lost. We have a policy in our charter which says that we don’t accept membership or support for Save our Services [in Surrey] from the far right and we’re very clear of that from the very beginning, say someone’s a member of a fascist or far right organization, they wouldn’t be allowed to be part of Save Our Services in Surrey. It’s not always clear, when we marched through Spelthorne on fire stations, there was a contingent from UKIP, but I think most people would accept that at that point in British history. UKIP weren’t what we would normally call a Nazi or a far-right party. That was certainly on the right. But these were generally people who wanted to say fire stations that would just happen to be members of UKIP. So, we made some, made a March at the back, put the union jacks away and they could join us on the March in 2013.
EM: What else in the charter?
PC: We have environmental causes in the charter. We said we are happy to support the environmental causes and it’s obviously become a big issue more recently, but we’ve linked up with the school students in Gilbert had been taken strike action. We’re supportive of that. It’s a whole range of other things. I can’t off the top of my head think of, but we would basically, we would defend public services. That’s the main role of Save Our Services in Surrey.
EM: Have you got any councillors or candidates in on these signed up to your charter?
PC: Yes, we have. It was a while took a while getting going and we’ve quite often found councillors, particularly Labour councillors who said ‘Oh, we didn’t know about it. I’d have put my name on it’. But that’s starting to get out there. People are starting to hear it, particularly again in the North and West of the County. But at the last count, there was something like 20, 25 locally elected councillors who’ve signed up to the charter. And that includes Labour and Green councillors. And the only other party if you like, which hasn’t stood in the last couple of elections anyway, was TUCC, which was a Trade Union Socialist Coalition, which obviously supported the charter. But we have, I think, one independent residence association councillor that has signed up to it, but that’s it.
EM: What advice would you give to over groups and trade union groups who are fighting against austerity measures in their own area, outside of Surrey?
PC: I would say to any trade union based in Surrey; you’ve got brunch I can get involved with Save Our Services. Don’t reinvent the wheel. We exist. We’ve welcome you to be part of us. Elsewhere. It depends on your local situation. I think if we’d have had an active trades council in Surrey, Save Our Services might never have been born because the trades council might have played that role. But even to this day, there is a fairly moribund trades council where two, three people attend from one union or two unions if they’re lucky. So, we believe that Save Our Services plays a far more significant role than that, which is a shame. But I think if you’ve got an active trades council, use that. Get in now, make sure you’ve got delegates coming and going to that event, to that body and organizing through that. But if you haven’t, then I would do what we, what we did, which was basically Google spend a few days Googling every local trade union name you can find, every email you can find, every phone number you can find in Surrey, or whatever your area is, from all the different trade unions. Ask them to come to a meeting and book a room, get everyone together, see if there’s any shared objectives. Can you come up with a 10-point program or something? But most importantly get involved. I think a lot of areas do have anti-cuts campaigns, but they tend to wax and wane depending on what’s going on. And they tend to be, I’ve found, dominated by one or two individuals from one or two political… or you know, so if it’s not their thing that they’re doing at that time, they let it go until something happens and they say ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got this look in the
banner out’. We decided right at the beginning, the Save Our Services wouldn’t be like that. Although I’m a member of the Socialist Party, probably wouldn’t be saying that the Socialist Party just brings out every now and then to try and get stuff. We want to be trade based, delegate based, democratic, and open and transparent and regular people to come to. So I would suggest all those, all those things are, are important. And again, get press involved in your launch. Make sure they know about it.
EM: What would you say what would you say is the difference between Surrey and London when it comes to fighting austerity?
PC: That’s a good question. I think the main issue for us in Surrey is the size of Surrey and the fact that it is largely a big part of it is rural. So again, across Surrey one of the reasons why we are stronger in the North and West is possibly because it is nearer to London and the transport links are better. It’s slightly more urban. But we have had meetings and have had demonstrations and things in places like Cranleigh and Redhill and other places of the further away from here. But I think if I were in London, I would expect it to be far easier to organize. You’ve got the tube network, you’ve got as much better public transport links, much better access to public buildings and facilities than we are have in Surrey. So, I would suggest you, it’d be much easier to work on a borough basis in London, whereas in Surrey we’ve decided the whole of Surrey rather than just Spelthorne or Runnymede.
EM: If people were wanting to help with your campaign or get involved in some matter, how would they reach you?
PC: They can email us at saveourservicessurry@gmail.com. Or they can go onto the website, which is http://www.sosis.org.uk and there was a contact sheet, which you can fill in and then you’ll go onto the mailing list. We have about 600 people on our mailing list. But that includes, I think it’s 14 different trade unions, all of whom, if it’s a big issue, will send stuff out to their membership. And we’ve got two residence associations who also send stuff out to their membership. So, we’ve got quite a big reach.
EM: This was recorded on the 18th of October, 2019. Thanks a lot, Paul.
Just outside London, in the sleepy borough of Runnymede, is Chertsey. Besides being relatively small and quiet, the town got a loud reminder that they have double dip symptom of Tory rule: a massive NHS contractor that has been screwing over their workers. The company: Compass, a contract catering service that covers many different hospitals over the country. The workers: angry and passionate, so much so that they travelled 200 miles from St Helens and Blackpool NHS trusts on 22 October to the Surrey headquarters curtesy of their union Unison, the UK’s largest union.
The reason for the strike is the lower levels of pay Compass employees get compared to colleagues employed through the NHS, £8.21 an hour and £9.03 an hour respectively, which can be a loss of £1’500 a year for the same work. These employees also don’t get bonuses for working bank holidays and weekends, and only get statutory sick pay.
One of the strikers said: “I do the same job as colleagues who are paid more than me. We wear the same uniforms, are subject to the same rules, have the same job descriptions – yet we’re paid and treated differently. It’s simply wrong.
“At weekends and on bank holidays, my colleagues on NHS contracts can be paid more than double. What’s more, if we’re ill, we have to choose between going without wages or working while we’re sick. A colleague arranged chemotherapy around their shifts because they couldn’t afford to be off work. Compass can end this cruelty – I hope they listen today.”
This is the fourth round of action taken by Compass employees, with a one-day strike on 31st July, a two-day strike on 27th – 28th of August, and a three-day strike from 19th – 21st of September.
The campaign has achieved success at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital Foundation where the workers achieved equal pay, but that was due to the actions taken by the foundation, not by Compass.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: “All these hospital staff are after is fairness. They give their all day in and day out, which is hard to do when they’re working alongside colleagues being paid significantly more.
“Compass could easily afford to pay its staff a better wage – it made more than £1.5bn of profit last year. Yet it’s ignored staff, has given conciliation service ACAS the runaround and refused to get around the table to bring this dispute to an end.
“Hopefully the trip to Chertsey will persuade Compass to see the error of its ways, and start paying staff the NHS rate they well and truly deserve.”
The indie-dominated UK wrestling scene, full of regional promotions across the country, has become fertile ground for a group that could be the harbinger of a long-overdue labour movement.
We The Independent (WTE), founded by Max Barsky, a wrestler who fights under the name David Starr, and James Musselwhite, a Plymouth-based wrestling photographer who has taken portraits of the biggest names in the business, is a growing campaign that seeks to create a culture of solidarity between wrestlers.
In a strong and passionate speech on WTE’s website, Barsky calls ‘a revolution’, for wrestlers to stop competing against each other for the lowest bid, and to stand against those who seek to monopolise the market and further trash rights, conditions and wages. WTE’s stated mission is to educate and inform independent artists of their rights, improve the conditions wrestlers face, and provide support to those in the Indie wrestling scene. They aren’t working alone: WTE has aligned itself with Equity, a TUC union specialising with creative artist industries, to transform these ideals to practice.
While WTE is young, and its goals still loosely defined, the momentum it’s gaining is impressive, with Indie darlings such as Roy Johnson hopping onboard. Alongside the support of Equity, WTE seems to be willing to go down a more radical approach, announcing via twitter it’ll be joining an organising workshop run by London IWW on 29 October from 10am to 5pm near London Blackfriars station. IWW is a radical independent union that has been making waves by organising workers in areas which employees are considered highly disposable by their employers, such Deliveroo drivers and English language teachers.
There will be an uphill battle for Barsky and Musselwhite as the Indie Wrestling world has long been controlled by those that exploit the dreams of men and women, and the WWE now has a foothold in the UK with a desire to dominate and cannibalise the regional circuits, just as it did in America during the 80s (see box). This led to a monopoly capable of crushing any union before it was even formed.
But this isn’t the 1980s, and this isn’t the US. As radical leftism goes mainstream, catalysed by Corbyn’s Labour, and realisation among the fans of the hardship of those that put their body on the line to entertain them, WTE might just win this Royal Rumble…
Looking at the bizarre world of professional wrestling, you’d assume that those in the ring are a different kind of rock star. With adoring crowds chanting their slogans, over-the-top entrances with custom theme music, and traveling from city to city, you might believe they have an easy and thrilling life. The Rock, Triple H, and John Cena are household names, at least in the US, and while the golden era of the WWE has passed, the company is still worth $5.71bn, as of May this year. Alongside WWE, there are several other big names in the industry, such as Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro-Wrestling. But unless you’re at the very top, things aren’t exactly easy.
There are many horror stories in the WWE: from union busting to internal politics keeping exceptional wrestlers at the bottom of the ranks, or fired, because of upper management’s whims. The most infamous of the dog-eat-dog world is the Montreal Screwjob.
But this attitude of how to run wrestling is by no means unique to WWE. It infests the independent scenes too, with the bonus of wrestlers being paid far less to the point of scraping by to live in many wrestling promotions, and the lack of insurance in US indies, which can devastate the lives of those who get injured in a sport which involved performing moves with a high chance of events going wrong that cause serious damage to the body and mind. One famous case is Chris Benoit who, after multiple injuries to the head throughout his career, killed his family then himself. It was found that the long-term damage had resulted in brain scans showing similar results to those with Alzheimer’s despite being only 40.
On top of this is a culture that rewards wrestlers for stepping over each other so that they can please those in charge. In a sport where the winner isn’t decided by skill but by who the story dictates wins, a cushy relationship with those that write the plotlines supersedes solidarity with fellow workers. In such a relentless industry, many wrestlers only stay in because of the love they have for their job and play along with the predatory nature of the promotions as there is no alternative way to succeed.
Changing times
But times are a’ changing. A desire for change has been fermenting for some time and calls for unionism among wrestlers are growing. WWE’s Ryder was one of the recent big names to the cause, but beyond words, not much progress has been made. The absolute monopoly WWE has in the US industry has hindered union creation for decades, and Japan’s anti-union environment has become a natural barrier to workers organising in NJPR (New Japan Pro-Wrestling).
The phrase zero hour contracts tends to conjure images of precarious workers being exploited by big companies. However, these contracts are used in a vast number of industries and at different scales. There exists a completely unrepresented workforce that is employed with no physical contract, no proof of employment, and every aspect of their working day conducted strictly off the books.
“I’ve done all sorts of labouring. General labouring, unskilled labouring. It was all sorts of jobs for all sorts of people, some with heavy safety regulation, others with none at all,” says Josh.
I have known Josh for almost two decades. He has been in and out of both zero hour contract and undocumented work, and agreed to speak to us about the nature of precarious work and it’s wider consequences when trying to establish any sort of stability in life.
Josh and I went to secondary school together. Although not close, we stayed in touch after I left for a different sixth form and he eventually moved to Eastleigh, near Southampton. “I was lucky I found Eastleigh arts college. It’s been knocked down now. It was a good college. From there I managed to go to university.” After three years studying illustration he found out on graduation day that he wouldn’t be getting his degree. “I had to retake two modules that I had failed. No one mentioned at the time that they’d be charging me for them. So because I owed them £190 they never let me graduate.” His plan had been to go to Japan and teach English. Without a degree certificate this avenue was blocked. “The only thing I needed was my degree, but I couldn’t afford the money. Years later when I had the money I’d lost motivation.”
All the hours…
It was some years after this that Josh and I lived together in Hounslow, West London, and he began his first labouring job. “I’d found an advert in a shop window and was invited to work in a guest house, but after a few weeks Sunny – the owner – moved me onto labouring. We alternated between labouring at the guest house and at a new house that he’d bought in a personal capacity.” Somewhat typically of this type of undocumented work, labourers are simply put where required, regardless of skills or experience. There were no set hours, but usually it would be 7 till 5, or 7 till 7. “Those were the longest hours I’ve ever worked,” he notes. There was no discussion about these hours: if something needed doing, they stayed late.
When I ask him about safety training, he looks amused. “There was no safety regulation. There was no supervision. There was no training of any sort. One day we’d be building walls, the next cleaning out attics with no masks or suit protection from fibre glass or anything. He just let us get on with it and would get angry if the work wasn’t done right. We even tore down are garage that was a known asbestos risk.”
To work on a building site, an individual needs a CSCS card as proof that they have the appropriate training and qualifications, but it’s no surprise that employers using undocumented workers don’t concern themselves with regulation. After all, there is no legal framework for accountability as there is no proof of employment. “I’d be getting £7.50 an hour, cash in hand. Even working as many hours as I did, I wouldn’t have been able to afford rent if not living with friends.”
It was the low wage that eventually resulted in Josh leaving Sunny’s outfit. “I asked for more money,” he recalls. “I’d been there for a year and the low pay and high stress was getting to me. There wasn’t any scope for progression or anything like that, so this really was a dead end.” Inevitably Sunny refused, and Josh lost the job. Perhaps most damagingly, he was unable to get any sort of reference. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he’d been doing nothing for a whole year. The lived experience of physically demanding labour and the stress that comes with it is simply not on record.
No warning
Eventually Josh moved back in with his mum and his sister, just outside of Southampton. He got a CSCS card and health and safety accreditation through college and began labouring through an agency. “I was up to £8 an hour now, though by the time the agency took a cut I’d be getting about £800 per month, working 11-hour days with a one-hour lunch. We were working on these multi-million pound houses in Winchester for a couple of months, but when the work ended there was no warning, just a call on the day saying don’t come in. Then some weeks later when more work came along, they’d call you up again.” All the while the employer dangled contracts in front of the labourers, without ever actually offering them. “Everyone wanted a proper contract and job security. When we asked, they said they’d bring them in but kept putting it off. They never actually materialised.”
Other zero-hour contracts would come and go sporadically, as is the nature of precarious work. After being at the agency for almost a year Josh was sacked for walking out. “A fellow worker, someone I became good friends with, had recently had an operation on his stomach,” he explains. “He was still pretty fragile and often needed to use the toilet during the day. The foreman was an absolute tyrant, and one day just sacked him on the spot for taking too long in the toilets. No one else said a word while he laid into this poor guy. I was shocked at the lack of solidarity. When he left, I walked too.”
This wasn’t an isolated incident. “The constant stress of knowing you could be fired at any time without any notice was becoming too much,” he remembers. He was blacklisted for walking out, with the agency giving his explanation short shrift. As with many jobs, there is a contradiction between the work in itself and having to work for someone. “I found labouring quite fulfilling at times. You can see what you’re helping to create and it felt tangible. But you’re always working under these types of people, in these types of conditions.”
Mental health toll
This was his last job. “From there my mental health deteriorated. It wears you down, working in all these places you’ll never be able to afford to enter.” Josh is now being treated using pregabalin, a medication used to treat his anxiety and depression, though it can be
used to treat a variety other ailments. “The other discouraging thing is the mental health service is awful. All the people that work there are good people, and you can tell they genuinely want to help, but I don’t see my psychiatrist for months at a time because of a waiting list.” This is a familiar story for anyone who has needed support with mental health in this country. For the last two years he has been on employment support allowance. He requires a monthly doctor’s note to get paid – £149 per fortnight. “I know I’m addicted to the pregabalin,” he acknowledges with resignation. He is also being referred for an assessment for ADHD.
I ask him about what he’d like to do in the future. “I have a degree in illustration and I’d like to use it,” he says. He is looking to purchase a tattoo machine with his girlfriend – who is also unemployed – and learn to tattoo. He is less optimistic about his housing situation. “It’s very stressful living with mum. She suffers from her own mental health issues and it’s a tiny flat. It’s a council place which the government pays rent to a private company for. The windows are fucked, so it’s freezing in the winter and there’s mould everywhere, but we’re too scared to say anything to the landlord. Things don’t look that bright all things considered.” He has more than five years on the council waiting list before he is entitled to a council property.
His final thoughts are sobering. “After you go through education, you expect that the road is set out for you and you end up with fuck all.”
What struck me most when conducting this interview is that, even as someone who speaks to Josh regularly, I have completely shut myself off from his circumstances. I am aware of them in the abstract but totally disconnected from the constant daily grind in a property that is not fit to live in, with opportunities completely constrained and having to deal with the callous welfare system in this country. And this is a friend. There are thousands of people living in circumstances like this who are completely silenced. The recent mobilising and unionising of precarious workers is extremely encouraging, but Josh’s story shows just how far there is to go and how fractured the current system is.
We want to give precarious workers a voice. Please contact us at marginal.notesuk@gmail.com if you would like to have your voice heard or have any industrial actions you would like us to support.
GMB members at Bakkavor food factory in Park Royal, west London, are campaigning for a £1 per hour increase for all grades.
This is the first time that this workforce has been asked to take industrial action. Workers are mainly from Gujarat, Sri Lanka and Goa, and predominantly women. They make humus and ready-meals for major supermarkets. They are one of the top 10 food and drink companies in the UK.
Bakkavor is a major employer in the area, covering three factories, one warehouse and almost 4000 workers. Most have worked there for many years and still only earn around the minimum wage. There’s also an additional issue of pay differentials between men and women at the factories, with women’s work – which is the toughest, both physically and mentally – being devalued.
Management has recently distributed a pay offer to workers that the union has already rejected because it is a con. The company wants to take money from workers’ breaks and add it to the hourly rate, so it’s not a real pay increase, more a shuffling of the deck. Under this offer, the hourly rate looks like a lot more but the pay packet at the end of the week will not be so different. Base operatives are currently on the minimum wage of £8.21 and have been offered an additional 15p increase, with the rest offered 43p more to maintain the skill differentials: semi-skilled workers are currently on £8.58, skilled on £9.28 and supervisors on £10.28. The highest grade workers are currently not even at the London Living Wage level.
Delay
“Management keeps saying they’ve got another offer, but it’s the same one coming around again each time. A few pennies more and fiddling the figures. They are treating their workers with contempt,” commented a GMB activist at Bakkavor. “People are getting fed up at how long the process is taking, but this is management strategy to grind workers down.”
Union activists have been building for an indicative ballot, but the date of this keeps being pushed back. Workers were due to be balloted on the week beginning 23 September, but this didn’t take place –a similar delay took place over the summer. Management sets meetings and then cancels them. As we go to (virtual) press, it’s hoped the ballot will happen on the following week, although nothing’s certain.
“From one week to the next, you build people up, then nothing happens,” said the rep: “With such a big workforce, this takes a lot of energy, so keeping the momentum from dipping is really important. When people don’t pull together, it gets demoralizing.” A one-day wildcat strike by about 50 workers, in the humus department on the August bank holiday was denounced by the union, leading to further demoralisation. The news of the suspension of two workers in this department spread throughout the company, causing many people to equate workers’ action with instant dismissal. One of these workers was a union member who did get his job back though, with the support of the union and his colleagues.
Building support
Meetings have been held outside the factories, with some workers joining, “but there is still a big leap to be made in terms of people actively participating and feeling okay about supporting the campaign vocally and publicly,” said the rep.
Most workers at Bakkavor have never been involved in industrial action, and are understandably nervous about taking such a step. Rumours are being spread about the fact that the factories will close down if the management have to meet the union’s demands, which further fuels their fears. “Obviously, there are no guarantees, but what we do know is that the company has made massive profits from continued poverty pay of their workers,” said the rep.
The potential importance of this action is huge. A fight here would send an important signal to all the low-waged migrant workers in London: enough of poverty wages!
They need your support. Workers are scared and unsure about the next steps. This is why we want to build up visible support for them.
Please come and show solidarity with the Bakkavor workers. Hindi speakers are particularly welcome. Follow the campaign on the GMB at Bakkavor London Facebook page. Keep an eye out for coming actions and show your support.
The workers at this major food manufacturer in Park Royal have overwhelmingly rejected 2 pay offers from management. The GMB union has a £1/hr more campaign running and we are now at the stage of doing an indicative ballot for industrial action. This is the first time that this workforce has been asked to take industrial action. Workers are mainly from Gujarati, Sri Lankan and Goa. There are many women workers. They make houmous and ready-meals for all the major supermarkets. Most workers have worked there for many years and still only earn around the minimum-wage. This is a major employer in the area, covering 3 factories and 1 warehouse and almost 4000 workers.
A fight here would send an important signal to all the low-waged migrant workers in London! Enough of poverty wages!
They need your support! Workers are scared and unsure about the next steps. This is why we want to increase their confidence and tell them ,”You can do this!”
Please come and show solidarity with us! (Hindi speakers especially would be useful). The more the merrier!
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