Cleaning companies are still using immigration law to intimidate and attack their low paid workers.
In the most recent instance, Initial/ Rentokil called immigration police to their head office, to arrest one worker who had a query about his wages. He spent the night in custody. Fortunately for him, he was released as there was in fact no problem with his immigration status. But he is still suspended from work and hasn’t received the wages he is entitled to!
Initial are also using immigration law as a way of getting rid of cleaners who have been employed for a long time. They do not want to honour wages and hours that should be protected by TUPE transfer legislation. They would rather use immigration law to sack long-standing workers and employ new people on inferior contracts.
This feels like a sickening re-run of the tactics used by cleaning companies following the LU cleaners’ strike in 2008. Cleaners who had been employed on poverty wages for years were suddenly subject to immigration checks as soon as they took a stand for better pay.
Then, like now, the purpose of immigration law is brutally highlighted. Immigration law is there to keep a section of the population in fear, so they won’t speak up for their rights at work. It is bad for every one of us. Every worker needs to be able to take a stand at work, to raise working conditions across every industry.
The government will peddle the racist and unjustifiable lie that immigration law ‘protects’ jobs and services for the ‘native’ population. But times like these expose this lie. The government clearly don’t care about any of their population. Instead of investing in jobs, housing and public services, they are viciously ripping them apart across the whole of society.
A well-attended demonstration outside Initial Head Office today proclaimed ‘Shame on Initial!’ We think they are feeling it, as they seem to have taken the sign down from outside their building. Every union member should get behind campaigns around immigration rights – and fight for decent jobs and services for everyone.