Workers' Notes: London strikes!

 by New Worker correspondent

At Heathrow Airport Easter is being marked by 10 days of strike action by over 1,400 security officers. The strike went ahead after unsuccessful pay talks. At present, the average salary of a Heathrow security guard, working endless shifts, is £30,000, of which £26,000 is the basic after three years experience, with a £4,000 shift allowance. Unite the union reckons that in real-terms this is 24 per cent less than in 2017. Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) refused to substantially improve its pay offer and only offered a lump sum payment as an addition to the current offer.
    At the same time, HAL CEO John Holland-Kaye had an 88 per cent pay rise, which he surely deserved as in 2020 he was only on £800,000 and desperately needed a more reasonable £1.5 million. He had a hard time during the pandemic when he was energetically firing and rehiring its entire workforce, resulting in most workers suffering serious pay cuts.
    This sum he earned because of the huge £2.1 billion in dividends he paid out to such deserving cases as Spanish infrastructure company Ferrovial, the Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and the Qatar Investment Authority.
    Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said: “Heathrow can afford to pay a decent pay rise to its workers. This is a wealthy company which is about to return to bumper profits. In recent years it’s approved an astronomical rise in salary for its CEO and paid out dividends to shareholders worth billions. Yet somehow Heathrow executives seem to think it’s acceptable to offer what amounts to a real-terms pay cut to its security guards and ground staff who are already on poverty pay.”
    Wayne King, a regional co-ordinating officer, added that: “Heathrow Airport has thrown away the opportunity to avoid strikes. Unite went into today’s meeting looking for an offer our members could accept. Unfortunately it seems HAL went in with no intention of avoiding industrial action.”
    The strikes affects Terminal Five, which is British Airways private terminal, and the security guards, who are responsible for checking all cargo.

Outsourcing Battles

The pay struggle continues, meanwhile, for ‘outsourced’ workers. On London’s Docklands Light Railway (DLR), contracted-out staff working for ISS and belonging to transport union RMT walked out on 48-hours strike last weekend.
    The workers involved in revenue protection, cleaning and security have rejected a pathetic 1.8 per cent pay offer, much lower than the rate for directly employed Transport for London (TfL) staff who perform equivalent roles. Despite promises from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, ISS staff have also not secured free travel, which other TfL workers have.
    RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said: “ISS are a multimillion-pound company whose arrogance knows no bounds. They already pay staff poorly and with inflation rapidly increasing an offer of 1.8 per cent shows they do not care one jot for their staff.”
    “RMT will continue their campaign for pay justice for these workers who are some of the most exploited in the transport system…ultimately Mayor Sadiq Khan needs to end the injustice of exploitation of contracted-out staff by bringing these workers back in house as soon as possible.”
    Also in London, outsourced cleaners at the Great Ormond Street Hospital For Children (GOSH) are undertaking a collective legal action against outsourcing, claiming compensation for past injustices.
    The court case by 80 largely migrant workers was brought by the small street union United Voices of the World (UVW), which points out that for decades the cleaners were outsourced on lesser terms and conditions than other directly employed GOSH workers. This led to a dispute between UVW and GOSH at the start of the pandemic that saw UVW force the hospital to abandon its cleaning private contractor and employ the workers directly as NHS employees. The recently concluded UVW action, if successful, could net each claimant between £80,000–£190,000. A decision is expected later this month. UVW say it is similar to a case it brought against the Royal Parks in late 2021, when outsourced Royal Park attendants at won an Employment Tribunal case that ruled their lower pay was unlawful because it amounted to indirect race discrimination. This case was contested by the Government who feared it setting a bad example.
    Not far from GOSH, in Oxford Street, London’s longest shopping street, outsourced cleaners organised by another small union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), took over the offices of mobile phone company Vodafone early last month.
    They are employed by subcontractor Mitie, whose low wages are matched by overwork, a lack of company sick pay, and victimisation for those who complain.
    Some cleaners faced disciplinary action from Mitie for turning down extra responsibilities beyond their job description after many redundancies of catering staff were made during the pandemic. Mitie did well from Covid, with profits rising 187 per cent to £167 million on the back of short-term Covid-related contracts.
    Last year cleaners won the London Living Wage at Vodafone buildings nationally and forced them to hire new staff, which partly reduced overwork.
    An eight-year veteran of cleaning the Vodafone HQ said: “I risked my life cleaning throughout the pandemic for £8.93 an hour, and had to take 10 days off without proper sick pay when I got COVID‑19. We need better sick pay. We need management to replace cleaners who leave or take holidays, so we’re not faced with excessive workloads. It's time for fewer meetings and more action from both Mitie and Vodafone.”
    IWGB General Secretary Henry Chango Lopez attacked Vodafone because: “Pretending concern for employee welfare whilst exploiting their outsourced migrant workers for poverty pay is shameless hypocrisy. They make billions in profit but deny their cleaners’ calls for basic rights like a proper sick pay. Mitie management have attempted to shut down the workers fighting back by victimising them and threatening them with blacklisting, but we will campaign alongside them until they get justice.”