On Friday 13th May Thames Valley (Reading) SolFed returned to the local Office Angels in support of Dan’s wage claim. By now people had begun to recognise us and in general the public were taking our leaflets quite happily. At 5-45 some of the staff from Office Angels came down and in contrast to the previous night's scuffle the mood was light-hearted. The man from the office who had sought to grab our leaflets came to apologise and tell us how much he respected our actions in support of Dan. Needless to say we welcomed the change of mood and made the point that this was not about them as individuals but about their firm and that it would, under other circumstances, no doubt treat them with the same contempt that it had Dan. They told us that their HQ had informed them that Dan had now been paid but naturally we were suspicious of this. Later, of course, we found out that this was indeed the case. What was apparent was that Office Angels had completely mishandled this and that their PR people (and no doubt their senior execs) must have been applying pressure to them to end this before it became even more embarrassing for them. Solidarity and direct action had prevailed and SolFed had made and won a profoundly important victory against both Office Angels and, more importantly, Addeco, the world’s largest ‘human resources’ company and owners of Office Angels.
