Living wage

Last year the “McStrike” campaign got an enthusiastic response from many labour movement left and labour movement activists.

But now, for a long time, there haven’t been any local branch meetings for fast food workers, any meetings for workers in the “McStrike” campaign, or meetings with organisers about the direction of the campaign. What went wrong?

Over the last year or so I’ve worked in Wetherspoons, and before that in Brixton McDonalds. Another worker previously involved in cinema worker organising was already working at Brixton when I started there.

UCU ballot opens

University staff belonging to UCU are being balloted for strike action this autumn over pay equality, job security, workload and pay deflation.

Working conditions in higher education have been deteriorating. The gender pay gap is over 15%; over 100,000 staff across the sector are on fixed-term contracts; academic staff work over 50 hours in a typical week; and in the past ten years pay has declined by 20% in real terms.

Cleaners and catering staff at the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) began an all-out, indefinite strike on 15 July.

This is extremely significant. It’s the first all out strike in a Whitehall government department for decades. The demands include the London living wage, sick pay, and direct employment.

The union is paying full strike pay. We won’t let these members be starved back to work. Fundraising for the strike funds is one of the best things activists in the wider labour movement can do to help these workers win.

Twelve months of negotiating. The IWGB’s “Rise of the precarious workers” demonstration descending on TDL’s headquarters doorstep. Demonstrating outside the company Christmas party they weren’t invited to. A two day strike that included a motorbike procession to prestigious clients in the Harley Street area and temporary occupation of the company loading bay. Amazing speakers on the picket line including Owen Jones, Dave “Blacklist” Smith and Dr Louise Irvine and support from clients, entrepreneurs and heavyweights like the ITF.

The civil service union PCS has just completed a membership consultation on the 2019 civil service pay claim and campaign plan.

On 27 January, an initiative called Spoons Workers Against Brexit was launched, calling on the Wetherspoons pub chain to remove the in-store propaganda for a no deal Brexit.

“We refuse to propagandise for politics that will only do us harm if enacted. Studies have consistently refuted claims that immigration is linked to low wages. Migrants don’t drive down wages; but wealthy, exploitative bosses like [Spoons chief and ultra-Brexiter] Tim Martin do.”

Deliveroo riders in Bristol will strike on Friday 18 January, demanding higher pay and other demands which managers have repeatedly ignored. This follows a national courier strike on October 4, and a spontaneous strike in Bristol on December 11, which brought Bristol Deliveroo to a standstill.

On Tuesday 27 November 2018 over 100 Unite the Union reps from cargo handling, cabin crew, catering, cleaning, engineering, security, baggage handling and the fire service along with some Unite officers and organisers packed into a committee room in the House of Commons for the launch of a campaign across four major airports.

Two train drivers talked with Solidarity about the latest in the long-running Driver Only Operation dispute, where the RMT union is taking action against threats to guards’ jobs.

As far as we know, the Merseyrail offer is not final. We’re not even sure why it’s been publicly released.

Negotiations are still ongoing. The ACAS process was supposed to be confidential, and this breaches that.

Last week we reported the wildcat strike by workers at the “community owned” Ivy House pub in South London, members of the Bakers’ Union.

In this case “community owned” meant more “Big Society” than “workers’ control”.

Shortly after the last Solidarity went to press on Tuesday 2 October, the Ivy House workers, who had kept the pub shut down completely for three days, won completely. The union is recognised, zero hours contracts will be replaced by fixed hours ones, and the four sacked workers are reinstated with back pay until a disciplinary process has ended.