At the London School of Economics the cleaning contract is held by ISS, a multinational with lots of privatised cleaning contracts, including the London Underground. The cleaners are mainly Latin American with poor English and a fear of joining a union or speaking out about their lousy pay and conditions.

As a result of a campaign by Justice for Cleaners, the LSE has adopted the London Living Wage which is higher than the National Minimum Wage. However, it was phased in over three years of the new cleaning contract.

Worse, the workers are paying for it. They are currently paid £6 per hour but staffing has been cut and they have to work harder. This has affected standards of cleaning - management blame the new contract for mice in the Library.

Last September Amey plc suspended 5 Colombian cleaners at the National Physical Laboratory for publicising the excessive workload the company had put on fewer staff, as well as subcontracting work to agency staff without proper training in health and safety – vital where some labs should not be entered by cleaners while dangerous experiments were in progress - to NPL staff. They were sacked for “gross misconduct” at the end of November.

When Amey took over the cleaning contract at NPL in December 2006 the largely Latin American workforce were seeking union recognition - a right afforded to all other workers at the NPL. Amey responded to what they saw as excessive pay rates and staffing levels by summoning the cleaners to a “training session” - the doors were bolted and 7 workers were arrested by police and immigration officials. They were sacked, and 3 were deported. None was replaced. The workforce was eventually reduced from 36 to just 10.

Cleaners on the London Underground chalked up an impressive victory in January when Clara Osagiede, a Cleaners Grade union secretary with the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union), had her sacking decision overturned in a disciplinary hearing with ISS, the owners of the cleaning contract on the Tube.

Mary Boakye, another union rep whose hearing followed that of Clara, had her dismissal delayed by 24 hours due to a raucous mobilisation in solidarity with the two women on the ISS front steps. The cleaning contractor’s choice to target them – who were both active in a successful strike for a London living wage (£7.45/hour) for tube cleaners –demonstrates its opposition to ongoing efforts by cleaners to improve their conditions in a contract which still doesn’t offer sickness pay, despite the death of one cleaner on the job last year.

To be made redundant, you have to be sacked as part of a reduction in the workforce. Being replaced with a cheaper worker is not redundancy and may be unfair dismissal. Bosses will sometimes redefine work as a “special project” to try to get round this. The law covers England, Scotland and Wales, with similar provisions in Northern Ireland. However, if you aren’t organised you may not be able to enforce your legal rights.

Redundancy is a “fair” reason for dismissal if the employer acts “reasonably”. A claim for unfair dismissal through redundancy can be taken to an Employment Tribunal within 3 months. You may have a company redundancy scheme which should be better than the statutory minimum, and which is part of your contract. Find this out, and make sure you get what you are entitled to. Otherwise, these are the statutory requirements.

The Lindsey Oil Refinery strike – in which over 800 workers participated in unauthorised (wildcat) work stoppages lasting over a week, with thousands more power plant workers showing their solidarity across the country – will probably be remembered as a “xenophobic” strike which called for “British Jobs for British Workers”. But what politicians of all parties and the majority of the media have failed to report, however, is that the message coming from the striking workers has been that it is not about race, and that they do not object to foreign workers. In fact, Lindsey workers were angered because they felt they didn’t have a chance to get these jobs and they saw the new contract, awarded to IREM, an Italian company, as an attack on the National Agreement for the Engineering and Construction Industry (NAECI).

The text of the leaflet being distributed on the London anti-cuts march on Saturday 23rd October 2010.

The working class across Europe is facing the worst attacks on our standard of living, jobs and services for decades. We have been forced to pay for capitalism’s crisis since it began; redundancies, pay cuts, benefit cuts, increasing workloads for those who kept their jobs... the private and public sector alike.

As the scale of the cut-backs begins to sink in, there are signs of a growing
movement against the cuts, with hundreds attending public meetings across the country. Many, disenchanted with the anti-war marches and the lethargy of the unions, are arguing for more direct methods in this struggle.

If the government were to announce that it was cutting the wages of all workers there would be uproar. Yet this is exactly what they have done by calling for ‘pay restraint’ and capping all wage rises at 2%. A below-inflation pay ‘rise’ is a pay cut. No amount of statistical trickery changes this fact.

The government’s favoured measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is currently running around 3.3%. However, this excludes mortgage repayments. Does that mean we don’t have to pay them back out of our falling wages? No such luck. The inflation measure that does include these payments is called the Retail Price Index (RPI). It is currently running at around 4.3%. So by the government’s own figures they are imposing a pay cut of over 2%.

A callout by our South London local, reproduced here due to its relevance for all of London

On Saturday 23rd October 2010 a number of trade unions have called for a march in London to lobby the TUC to fight the cuts. This is the same day as the annual London Anarchist Bookfair and a day when a large number of anarchists are in the city. We are calling on all anarchists and militant workers to join us in forming a 'Radical Worker's Bloc' on the demonstration, not to beg the trade union bureaucrats to take action, but to argue that we fight the cuts based on the principles of solidarity, direct action, and control of our own struggles.

NLSF once again joined other militants to demonstrate outside London & Regional Properties, owners of company Berns Salonger, notoroious bosses of cleaners in Sweeden fighting for their dignity.

This followed on from a very successful mass demonstration on Friday 13th August. However the demo was less well attended, and a slight organisational hitch meant the leaflets for distrobution arrived late. None-the-less, international solidarity was shown to the workers in Sweeden, and may their fight continue onwards to success.

The Cleaners Defence Committee is a network of cleaners, workers and militants who have supported migrant workers in their struggles in London for fair treatment and a living wage.