Tube cleaners stand up to Big Brother

Submitted by AWL on 23 June, 2014 - 11:50

Cleaning workers on London Underground are fighting the introduction of biometric fingerprinting machines, which cleaning agency ISS wants workers to use to book on for shifts.

ISS cleaners in the RMT union are boycotting the machines. A cleaning worker spoke to Solidarity about the struggle.


Biometric fingerprinting takes a print of your capillary blood vessels, which are unique to every one of us. Immigration authorities put biometric data on your passport and visas, to keep track of exactly who is in a country. It’s a “Big Brother” technology.

ISS say biometric data will make their pay systems more efficient, but we believe it goes beyond that. ISS has an overwhelmingly migrant workers. We believe ISS is having its strings pulled by the UK Border Agency and the Home Office. The company has said that, if they’re asked to, they’ll give all the biometric data to the Home Office.

We already know ISS cannot be trusted, and is happy to shop its employees to the immigration police. Just after the Olympics, ISS summoned 30 cleaners to an office in Stratford, apparently to receive “an award” for their work during the games. When they got there, they found UKBA and the Met waiting for them. Some of them were in the UK on student visas, and were deported. Others are still in the UK, but out of work, and others have been forced to return home. That’s how ISS treats the people who work for it. In 2013, a UKBA snatch squad raided Waterloo station and took night-shift cleaners away from work.

The introduction of biometric machines was announced 18 months ago. We began putting out stickers and posters, to educate people about what the threat was, and strengthen their resolve. We had ballot for action short of a strike last year. The action the union agreed upon was for cleaners to boycott the machines. Our ballot delayed ISS’s implementation.

But the union could’ve done more over the last year to build up membership. When ISS announced on Friday 13 June that they would begin implementation on Monday 16 June, we were left having to organise things somewhat at the last minute when we should already have had plans in place.

When that announcement was made, we got the message round as many cleaners as we could that the industrial action gave them legal protection not to use the machines.

We told members to use the standard procedure for booking on instead, where they’re signed into stations by station supervisors.

ISS tried to send cleaners home if they refused to touch the machines. Where cleaners were “locked out” of work, union reps went to visit them.

At many stations, cleaners refused to touch the machines. I was getting phone calls from all over the place. ISS were telling people they wouldn’t get paid if they didn’t use the machines, we told people to remain on site and sit in messrooms if they had to: we weren’t refusing to work, just refusing to use the machines. Some ISS managers threatened to call the police.

Some station supervisors were unsupportive, telling cleaners to leave messrooms, but others have shown solidarity by flooding ISS with jobs for every bit of dirt in their station. ISS gets fined when jobs aren’t fulfilled, and because they’d locked cleaners out, the jobs weren’t being covered.

A lot of cleaners feel threatened and intimidated. We have bills to pay like everyone else, and people are scared of losing their jobs. We’ve tried to counteract the intimidation, telling cleaners to put in grievances and that the union will back them.

Our action has caused mayhem for ISS so far. It’s costing them a fortune to hire agency staff to cover for cleaners they’re locking out for refusing to use the machines, and they’re also being fine because of unfulfilled jobs. In talks with RMT, they agreed that everyone locked out on Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 June would be paid, and that implementation would be delayed until Monday 23 June. In further talks at ACAS, the implementation was put back again until 4 July, which gives us a couple of weeks’ breathing space to organise further.

I think we’ll have to strike over this. It could be a long, drawn-out battle. We need strike funds urgently, otherwise cleaners won’t be able to afford to take sustained action. The IWGB at the University of London has been effective in organising fundraising events and donations, we need to learn from that.

There’s been a tendency for cleaners’ struggles to be sidelined when issues amongst directly-employed LU staff come up. We cannot let that happen. This is the biggest fight for cleaners on the Tube since the Living Wage strikes in 2007. If RMT takes it eye off this issue again, or deprioritises it to focus on the LU jobs dispute, cleaner reps who’ve organised the action so far will be picked off.

ISS is a multibillion pound company. Low-paid, mainly-migrant cleaning workers taking them on feels like a modern-day David and Goliath. But I don’t think the company realises what we’re capable of. We’ve already proved that with our action so far. We sat in station messrooms because ISS wouldn’t let us work if we didn’t touch the machines, and they’ve been forced to pay us for it!

That’s already stung them. We must continue to stand our ground.

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