Cleaners discuss coordinated strike

Submitted by Matthew on 3 October, 2012 - 1:36

Cleaning workers across Britain could take part in a national, co-ordinated strike, as rail workers’ union RMT discusses how to galvanise and bring together its several live disputes involving cleaners.

Workers on London Underground, Docklands Light Railway, London Midland, East Coast, Tyne and Wear Metro, and elsewhere could be involved in the strike, which may be a 48-hour action in October or November.

Although London Underground bosses won’t feel extra industrial impact if Tyne and Wear Metro cleaners take action at the same time as their own staff, the workers themselves will gain an increased sense of their own power and collective issues by taking action alongside fellow workers engaged in similar struggles across the country. Many of the issues — such as low pay, pensions and travel pass inequality, and precarious working arrangements resulting from subcontracting — are the same across all the disputes, and a high-profile, nationally-coordinated industrial campaign would be a clear signal that the union, sometimes accused of privileging the struggles of higher-skilled or better-established grades of workers, takes its cleaning members’ battles seriously. It may also make it harder for bosses to organise scabbing!

On 26 September, Newcastle City Council agreed to implement a new policy committing to pay the living wage (calculated at £7.20 per hour for Newcastle) to all employees to be implemented in November. This means a pay increase for 2,000 low-paid workers, including cleaners. The policy also includes a commitment to use this living wage for directly-contracted services and for the council to a campaign to encourage other employers to do pay the same. Although the Tyne & Wear Metro cleaners are not directly employed by the council, they do work on a contract tendered out by public authorities, and the council’s new policy will give weight to their campaign.

Outside of the rail industry, cleaning workers in the financial sector are continuing their fight against Société Générale bank. Just days after announcing a pay increase to the London Living Wage (£8.30 an hour), bank bosses and cleaning contractors announced a unilateral 50% cut in workers’ hours. This represents a huge loss of pay, and means that workers are now expected to eight hours’ work in a four hour shift. Workers who have been involved in pickets and protests at the bank have been suspended, and now face suspension. The workers are organised by the Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), a small split from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), are continuing a campaign of demonstrations and the IWGB has called for widespread labour movement support.

The RMT in London has been supportive of IWGB and IWW cleaners’ struggles, with workers from their disputes addressing Tube cleaners’ picket lines.

That mutual support and coordination should continue, and the RMT should reach out to the IWGB — and any other union with live disputes involving cleaning workers — to discuss involving them in the proposed national strike.

• More on the IWGB dispute at Société Générale - bit.ly/Otxm8c

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