On Wednesday 17 June, tube cleaners and supporters, including Feminist Fightback, Campaign Against Immigration Controls, and MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, demonstrated outside City Hall to demand that London Mayor Boris Johnson keep his promise of a living wage for all tube cleaners.
Johnson has been in the press with the publishing of the study he commissioned into an amnesty for migrant workers. Yet his real approach to migrant labour can be found in how he has dealt with the tube cleaners’ campaign: promise a living wage, fail to deliver and preside over cleaning contractors who targeted union reps with immigration checks to break the RMT’s organisation. His idea of an amnesty would deny even those who met its hurdles access to the public services their taxes pay for, and would further delegitimise the thousands who wouldn’t meet its strict criteria.