McDonnell backs cleaners’
fight for rights
Morning Star Monday 24 May 2009
by Paul Haste Industrial Reporter
LABOUR MP John McDonnell on Sunday
backed the fight by City cleaners sacked for organising and urged Unite to
combat bosses’ attempts to victimise its activists.
Privateer cleaning companies have
stepped up their attacks on union reps after Unite succeeded in organising
migrant workers in central London as part of the Justice for Cleaners campaign.
Mr McDonnell revealed that privateer
bosses were "waiting until the headline news about union recognition
victories had passed before attacking key union organisers and activists.
"Workers such as those in the
Justice for Cleaners campaign may well make gains and a large number thought
that they had a victory, but employers haven’t waited long before quietly
trying to claw back what they had won," he stressed.
The privateer cleaning corporations,
subcontracted by wealthy banks, insurance companies and private equity firms to
provide workers to clean their plush offices in the City, have been forced to
raise poverty wages to the £7.45-an-hour London Living Wage and have conceded
union recognition to more than 3,000 workers as a result of the Justice for
Cleaners campaign.
But several companies are now
attempting to take back the gains by demanding that staff work longer hours –
and are stepping up attacks on the newly organised workers by victimising union
reps.
Cleaning firm Mitie recently sacked
Unite shop steward Edwin Pazmino and several of his colleagues working at the
Willis insurance firm’s building in the heart of the capital.
Mitie bosses claimed that there was
no other option but to move the workers from a part-time evening shift to a
full-time night shift – unsociable hours that many of the workers with children
were unable to do – before sacking them when they refused.
Another Unite rep Alberto Durango
was then suspended by bosses at cleaning firm Lancaster after he supported the
Mitie cleaners.
For good measure, Mr Durango’s
bosses called in immigration agents and the police to arrest him for supposedly
using false papers – despite having worked for the company for more than 10
years.
Mr McDonnell pledged to "stand
with the workers in their fightback," while demanding action from the
government to prevent union activists being victimised for "pursuing their
basic rights to organise."
And he urged Unite to defend its
members from the bosses’ onslaught, pointing out that "the employers have
a strategy to combat the union’s success – now the union needs a strategy to
combat the employers."
