City of London Corporation cleaners say: Occupy Guildhall!

Cleaners are staging a sit in at the Corporation of London’s Guildhall in protest at the inadequate response of their employer, the contractor Sodexo over the abusive treatment of women employees.

Friday 23rd December, 6am onwards
The Guildhall, London, EC2V 7HH

Cleaners staging sit in at Corporation of London’s Guildhall over abuse of women!

The cleaners who are organised by the independent workers union, the Industrial Workers of the World say their action comes after a growing frustration with Sodexo (and their predecessor Ocean) following persistent complaints regarding the conduct of certain members of the management team at Guildhall. Repeatedly complaints have been raised with respect to varying degrees of the mistreatment especially women, including extreme acts such as bullying, confinement of individuals, intimidation and assault.

The cleaners say the last straw was an incident involving a manager and one of the union representatives on Monday 21 November. The rep Isabel Martin was followed to a room in the basement of Guildhall, where she was blocked from leaving with the door closed, then it is alleged a male supervisor subjected her to an outburst of aggression and intimidating behaviour, the terrified women felt was under threat of real physical violence.

The IWW London Regional Secretary Chris Ford states that ‘the union has raised concerns and complaints of the treatment of employees on enough previous occasions with the employers to warrant sufficient preventative measures to safeguard the safety employees and to ensure no further mistreatment may occur. In the summer a mass meeting of cleaners had called for the removal of those managers responsible for ill-treatment of workers.’ The last incident the IWW insists could have been avoided if the concerns of workers were respected and acted upon beforehand. One cleaner stated: ‘These big companies need to put the safety of the workers before the reputation of the City of London Corporation’.

The union feels Sodexo have dragged their feet over this incident – they raised a complaint in letters of 22/11/2011 and 29/11/2011 but it took twenty days before the women worker was formally interviewed. Her complaint of such a serious matter has been treated as a mere grievance.

For the last two days a number of workers have refused to undertake their cleaning duties and are staging a sit in at the reception of the Guildhall. They are demanding robust action that can protect women workers from such ill-treatment occurring again.This is an ongoing campaign and the cleaners would appreciate any support.

Sack Prentis and Barber

Pensions: Will Prentis try and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Leicester Solidarity Group on the rumours that Unison general secretary Dave Prentis is set to agree a backroom deal to cut local government and NHS workers' pensions.

While Brendan Barber openly pimps the government's latest pensions "offer" (which in reality offers sweet FA) and is busy urging all public sector unions to kiss Francis Maude's posterior, Unison's Dave Prentis also seems keen to let his backbone slip, and the word on the street is, he's been arguing for total surrender with other union bureaucrats. We're not in the least bit surprised, given that Prentis and the Unison leadership only backed N30 on account of rank and file pressure. Still, Dave tells us it ain't so and in today's Unison eFocus says:

"I realise that rumours have been circulating and I wanted to reassure you that no decisions have been taken over the details surrounding contribution increases or the future look of the LGPS.

"However, I believe that - if agreed - the principles under discussion will provide a very positive framework for negotiations and potentially could lead to no change until 2014."

If you notice just how positive he is, then you don't need to read between the lines to see that Prentis is itching to sell out his members.

Rank and file pressure forced him to back us and rank and file pressure can force him to hold firm. But if that fails, the electricians are already showing us how it's done without the help of union bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, there's an online petition against secret deals by union leaders here.Sac

Never trust a politician

Lord hahah Hutton has just said that the changes to public sector workers should be speeded up to avert the country slipping further into economic decline. What a joke not only have public sector workers been told they will not get a rise for another 2 years they are also being told that out of their meagre wages they should contribute more towards their pension. Some of us haven't had a pay rise in 6 years. What aren't saying is that the extra contributions aren't going into the pension fund but are going to the treasury. They are also relying on people staying in the pension fund but quite the opposite is true. People will leave in their droves. What they also are conveniently forgetting is that MPs all of whom are parasitic and many of whom are millionaires are on final salary pensions. In the year 2008 MPs had a hole in their pensions of £40,000,000 and were then bailed out by the treasury. They have also been told their pensions will be changed in line with the public sector and the backbenchers have rebelled. So its all right for the workers to suffer but MPs mustn't. Hang the lot of them. Get the money back of the bankers and the rich not the working classes.

When will people stop treating soldiers as heroes!!! No one told them to join the army, no one told them to go and fight on foreign shores!! They volunteered, they thought it would exciting. Getting shot for areshole politicians to flex their muscles is a waste. It's also been reported that american soldiers a have come under fire from across the boarder in  Pakistan, what do they expect its a war. Its about time we our priorities right, what about people who are killed doing their daily work (construction etc) are they heroes?They should be  applauded, but they are forgotten. Society is crap, stop wars and take the toys from the boys!