employment rights

John Foley, founder of the Ryanair Don't Care campaign against the exploitation and scamming of cabin crew, has staged a protest outside the offices of Dalmac, a recruitment company in Dublin used by the airline.

The YouTube video below shows someone connected with the company mounting the pavement in her car to drive over John's banner and, at one point, almost run over him.

John also attended a recent meeting of our local to talk about the campaign and how we can actively support it. He told us: "I have never told anyone not to work for Ryanair. I want to make information available about their employment practises. It's then up to individuals to make a choice for themselves." He also insisted that attempts by Ryanair and its partners to intimidate him will be fruitless.
 

A protest was held outside Liverpool John Lennon airport yesterday to highlight Ryanair's exploitation of employees and also remember Paul Ridgard, a Ryanair pilot who passed away in May of this year. More actions are planned for the future. SolFed are also making enquiries through the IWA/AIT about how we can help make the campaign against Ryanair go continental (our Spanish sister organisation, the CNT, has organised some workers at the airline, see here).

John Foley, founder of the Ryanair Don't Care campaign, speaks about yesterday's protest:

On Saturday 2nd July WYSF held a leafleting session outside Vodafone in Hull as part of a campaign against tax dodging and anti union practices. We gave out 500 leaflets and had a pretty positive response.   This included one person asking about groups in Nottingham, who was refered to the National Website.

Download as a pdf here.

After thirteen years of disgrace the New Deal programme is coming to an end and is being replaced by American style ‘workfare’ - a punishment for unemployment in the form of degrading unpaid work. We need to stand together and resist this new attack on the working class, but in the meantime we’re letting you know how you can win back some time for yourself.

As New Deal is being replaced the DWP have already stopped signing people back onto the course. There is nothing stopping you from signing off for personal reasons tomorrow, and signing back on to regular JSA in a day or two. You’ll lose one or two days of benefit and won’t get put back on New Deal. That’s a good deal.

Just don’t go into new deal tomorrow, and go to your local jobcentre and ask to sign off for personal reasons. When they ask you to write a statement just write the same thing, that you are signing off for personal reasons.

Comrades! belting success - dished out 200 leaflets, could have been more. LOADS of messages of support from public. Was issued with a statement from OA as soon as we landed saying Dan had been paid. I think we've picked up on a real burning issue to people. 6 + me from local anarchist group attended.
Statement taken from Newcastle Evening Chronicle, fingers crossed..

On the 11/05/11 West Yorkshire Solidarity Federation picketed the Leeds branch of Office Angels. We were joined by Leeds AF. Office Angels locked there doors (maybe thinking we where planning to storm the office) but didn't come out to see what we were doing. We gave out 300 leaflets, getting a good response. Some people came over... to ask for leaflets and at one point the whole of a bus queue outside of Office Angels where reading the leaflet.

Bristol solidarity Federation will be continuing with their support of the Office Angels temp who has never been payed in full for the three days work he did last year.

As part of the national week of action called by SF-IWA we are planning a picket of the Office Angels branch, 35-38 High Street, Bristol. This will commence at 11.00am on Thursday, 12th May. We urge anyone free to come down and support this campaign. Members of Bristol SF have been involved in the struggle against the casualisation of work for many years. This initiative is part of on-going work to ensure that workers are not robbed of their pay, their rights and their safety.

We demand that Dan is paid in full for the work he has done.

Members of WYSF (along with AF) picketed Office Angels in Leeds and handed out over 200 hundred leaflets.  We had a very positive response including one person who wanted more information and is going to look at the National website to see what we do.  We also spoke to someone who was posting her CV to Office Angels who was very interested in the leaflet and the information it contained.

Members of Bristol Solidarity Federation have been fighting about the casualisation of work for many years. We have therefore decided to support the campaign against Office Angels. We demand that the ex-employee at the centre of this campaign is payed in full for the work he did, we also go beyond that initial demand and wish to see a culture of solidarity so that agencies realise that they can't mistreat workers and get-away with it.

Temporary workers face unacceptable conditions every day. They work without sick pay or maternity leave, are ...vulnerable to unfair and instant dismissals and have no union support. Rising unemployment and a bleak economic climate will force even more of us to accept these precarious conditions - yet another example of working class people being exploited by an economic system that only benefits the rich.