First day of the all-out strike at the Village Hotel in Glasgow (Picture: Unite Hospitality)
Two groups of workers who are members of the United Voices of the World union will strike together this Saturday. Workers who are employed at the Raddison Blu Hotel in Canary Wharf have had their hours slashed from 40 to 16 per week.
Despite the reduced hours, the workers now have to clean 24 rooms a day. This is a massive intensification of their workload. Bosses pressured the predominantly Nepali women workforce into accepting the new terms—but workers want a 40 hour week and the London living wage of £13.85.
Meanwhile, bar workers at Draughts—the iconic board game bar chain with venues in Hackney, Stratford and Waterloo—have voted 100 percent in favour of strikes.
Workers are demanding an end to exploitative zero-hours contracts and chaotic scheduling. This includes last minute shift cancellations that leave workers financially insecure.
Workers will strike together this Saturday. Support the UVW strikes, meet 12 noon, Canary Wharf, Jubilee Park, www.uvwunion.org.uk
The Unite union members voted 100 percent yes to strikes on an 81 percent turnout.
At the core of the dispute are three demands—the living wage of £12.60, pay equality for younger workers who are currently paid just £10 an hour and the right to take paid breaks.
In the same week that Village Hotels was bought by Blackstone, which has $1 trillion of assets, workers were told there was no money for a 39p pay rise.
Workers have already won a backdated pay rise to fix pay inequality. The inequality affected primarily young women who were underpaid for their work for around two years. But workers are absolutely right to demand more.
Health care assistants (HCAs) in Homerton hospital have won an important victory for decent pay.
The victory in Hackney, east London, is part of a national fight across the NHS for HCA’s to be taken up a pay band from B2 to B3.
We started our campaign with a survey to gather evidence that workers were performing tasks above their band, then held a campaign launch meeting.
We set up a WhatsApp group and encouraged HCAs to recruit their colleagues, holding regular online meetings. We won upbanding for our HCAs, but more important was to win back pay.
B2’s receive higher rates than B3 HCAs for working nights and weekends.
But we heard that other hospitals had deducted this from the backpay, which became known as “clawback”. Our trust wanted to impose this on our members too, using the argument that this would be in line with our closest hospital.
We called emergency meetings to our members about clawback and explained it in our WhatsApp group. We let the trust know that we would be balloting our Unison union members for industrial action.
Within two days, the trust had backtracked, saying that they would make the payments without clawback. This makes it the best deal won in London so far.
It took a lot of work, and persistence, but organising and empowering members to get involved was how we won this victory.
Our message to other hospitals is don’t accept a worse deal than this—say NO to clawback.
Jordan Rivera
Some 20 counsellors in Norfolk and Waveney struck for better pay on Thursday of last week.
The talking therapist workers are employed by Mind—the charity that is contracted to run services for Norfolk and Suffolk NHS.
They stormed the streets of Norwich after picketing and gathered massive support from members of the public.
The Unison members currently paid at band 6 on NHS pay rates—but want to be on band 7, which would net them thousands of pounds extra a year.
Mind bosses claim they don’t employ high-intensity therapists despite workers providing that service.
Workers have spent nearly two years trying to resolve the dispute and struck for two days in May and June.
The Independent British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy has written to Mind agreeing that the workers should be moved up a pay band.
In March, workers scored some 94 percent vote for industrial action.
They are also taking action short of a strike, and refusing to offer any new high intensity therapy.
Access to mental health services in an important class issue—the workers that deliver them should be paid correctly.
Last Saturday, around 100 healthcare workers marched through Dorchester to fight plans to outsource them to a private subsidiary company.
Some of those who marched said that plans made them feel like “second class citizens”.
This would affect more than 1,700 workers, including cleaners, porters and security workers.
If the subsidiary company doesn’t make a profit, it can tear up the terms and conditions of all 1,700 members. This could mean attacks to pensions, weekend pay and maternity pay.
Unison union is currently conducting a strike ballot amongst its members. The appetite to stop it is there and workers are ready to fight.
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