UVW members have overcome the odds winning a ballot for trade union recognition at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) with a whopping 70 per cent vote in favour!
The victory has come just three weeks after the workers won full pay sick pay for Covid-19 related absences and some two months after the death of their colleague, cleaner and UVW member, Emanuel Gomes. Gomes’ death was mired in controversy with reports the MoJ ignored repeated warnings of potential Covid-19 infections and had put workers’ lives at risk through its refusal to provide full pay sick pay or face masks. Something which saw Labour’s Shadow Justice Minister, David Lammy MP, call for an official investigation.
This victory has come despite the MoJ contractor, OCS, subjecting the workers to a vicious campaign of union busting. The cleaners, security guards and porters have voted in favour of recognition of their union, United Voices of the World (UVW), in a statutory ballot administered by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC). The UVW is a street union founded in 2014 that mainly represents outsourced migrant workers in London and beyond.
And this marks the first time that a non-TUC affiliated union has won a recognition deal in Whitehall.
The workers defied what the union called the OCS’s “shocking union busting” which led to the UVW submitting several complaints to the CAC. They say OCS offered pay rises to UVW activists if they agreed to transfer to other sites while blocking other key union members from attending meetings for the purposes of discussing recognition. The union claims the contractor also refused to provide employees with facemasks which prevented meetings between the workers and the union from taking place - something which saw the UVW lodge a formal complaint with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The UVW has vowed to continue fighting until the Ministry of Justice ends outsourcing and hires the workers directly on equal terms and conditions with civil servants. To that end the union is going to also bring a case to Employment Tribunal arguing that outsourcing the entirely BAME and migrant workforce on inferior terms and condition to civil servants is a breach of the Equality Act 2010.
The union has also pledged to bring a Judicial Review against the Health and Safety Executive and the Ministry of Justice’s failure to mandate the use of face masks, which the union claims encourages employers to breach health and safety legislation.
Speaking after the result of the ballot was announced, one of the cleaners, Fatima Djalo, said the following: We have won, we have won, we have won. We beat them. We beat their union busting and won our rights. I’m delirious with happiness with this result. Now let’s go for full victory!”
Yet again UVW members have shown what can be done when workers organise and use their collective power to show the boss that they will not be intimidated. The fight isn't over and they still have a long way to go before their members are treated with the full equality and dignity that they deserve, but they are getting closer than ever!
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