Members of South London SF have been involved in the campaign to save Lewisham Bridge primary school from being demolished and rebuilt as a trust run by the Leathersellers group. Parents occupied the roof on April 23rd when the school began bussing the kids to a building a mile and half away. An attempt was made to evict the protestors on 24th june after we took the garden and opened it up to kids and parents. The bailiffs and police were unsuccesful but the immediate future of the occupation is uncertain and the campaign looks to take other directions over the summer. 

For more details and updates check:

http://defendeducationlewisham.wordpress.com

http://libcom.org/news/lewisham-bridge-school-occupation-24042009

Or check the Facebook group

No Sweat conference at Queen Marys College, Mile End Road E1 on Sunday 7th December.

SLSF will be doing a stall there, come and say hello!

Catalyst #18 is out.

Solidarity with sacked IKEA workers in Brescia, Italy.
 
On 1st September, whilst workers were being transferred between one work agency to another, 7 workers were sacked, even though they had been assured they would be absorbed into the new agency.

These general service workers had been working at IKEA for several years, had been lowly paid at €5 per hour and working up to 200 hours per month and had been working in unsafe working conditions in the underground car park with no exhaust fans. Workers even had to purchase their own safety clothing.

It is obvious that IKEA had no respect for the workers health and preferred to ignore health and safety rules in order to maximise profit. With decreasing sales, IKEA chose to downsize their workforce and weaken the work conditions of the workers, with restaurant and bar staff within the complex now having to perform the duties of the sacked carpark workers.

The 7 sacked workers are now picketing the Brescia IKEA store every Saturday and Sunday until they are reinstated.

Sustain the struggle of the workers of  Brescia’s IKEA
 
Sabotage IKEA who refuse their own responsibility
No more exploitation
Solidarity with the workers fired by IKEA
 
from the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI) Commercial workers section.

Mayor's Question Time had to be adjourned twice today as activists protested Boris Johnson's failure to follow up on his promise of a Living Wage for tube cleaners.  The cleaners' demands were shouted from the public gallery while more than thirty people demonstrated outside City Hall for the demands to be met.

"Cleaners on the Underground are essential for a functioning public transport system in London. It is totally unacceptable that their demands for a Living Wage and decent conditions have been met with intimidation and victimisation on immigration status grounds. We need to expose the employment practices which capitalise on workers' insecure status to allow poverty wages and demeaning conditions to continue."

Two months after the Mayor's 1 August deadline, many cleaners are still waiting to see their wages increase to the Living Wage. On top of this immigration checks have been used to intimidate those who took part three days of legal strike action this summer. One rep has been suspended and three union members have been deported for not having official immigration status.

Andy Ansah, who was at the demonstration outside City Hall and who until recently worked as a cleaner on the tube said:

'Immediately after the strike this summer the companies that run the tube used immigration controls to get rid of people.   We are here to protest against that.  Cleaners should not be victimised or deported for demanding the living wage.'

Cleaners will continue to organise and solidarity activists have said actions will continue until the Living Wage is extended to all cleaners on the Underground, and intimidation stops.

South London Solidarity Federation Supports the Tube Cleaners.
An article about the Tube cleaners Strike and action reports.
July 4th, 2008 taken from LibCom.org

Tube cleaners’ union RMT has demanded an end to “appalling intimidation“ of members involved in a 48-hour strike for a living wage on, one on July 1st-3rd. Tube cleaners also engaged in a 24-hour strike on June 25th-26th.
The union is gathering evidence that cleaners have been bullied, harassed and threatened with the sack and with illegal punitive deductions from their wages if they take strike action.
“Reports coming in from picket lines over the last 36 hours indicate that the employers are so desperate that they are resorting to gangster-style intimidation and using the worst sort of fear tactics to stop more people joining the strike, “ RMT general secretary Bob Crow said today.
“That is testimony to the effectiveness of our 700 members’ solid action and the fact that RMT membership has grown since the strike began, but it also underlines the scale of the problems our members have to endure down there.
“Managers have been threatening people with the sack if they join the strike and telling them that they will have sums deducted from their wages that are way above what they could have earned during the strike.
“Others are being told blatant lies, such as they are not allowed to join the union after the strike ballot.
“At Stratford seasoned reps are telling us that they are appalled at the level of intimidation they have seen and at the squalid conditions ISS cleaners there have to endure, with men and women having to change for work together in a tiny store-room with no privacy.
“This is also where workers have to race each other to work in the morning because managers allow the number they require to book on and send the rest home without pay.
“That is disgusting wherever it happens, but on one of the world’s most prestigious metro systems it is inexcusable, and we hope Londoners will join us in demanding an end to the disgraceful exploitation that is taking place in their name, “ Bob Crow said.

The 48-hour strike by 700 tube cleaners working for cleaning subcontractors ISS, ITS, ICS and GBM on London Underground began at 18:50 on Tuesday evening and ended at 19:00 on Thursday evening. The cleaners' demands are a wage increase - to bring their wages up to the London Living Wage of £7.20 rather than the £5.50 many find themselves on now - as well as 28 days holiday, sick pay, decent pensions and travel facilities, and an end to the barbaric practice of ‘third-party sackings’ in which cleaners can be dismissed, with no disciplinary hearing or right of appeal, at the behest parties other than the employer - a device used to get rid of union activists.

South London SolFed have been invovled in supporting the strikers, below is a report on an action we were invovled in.

On Wed 13thAugust around 30 protestors turned up at the Greenwich offices of multinational cleaning comany ISS to protest against the letter sent out by the company to dozens of tube cleaners requesting they come in for a 'document check' that day.
It is clear to the cleaners' union RMT that this is part of the reprisals against the tube cleaners for the 3-day strike in support of a Living Wage which they held in late July. Activists and reps among the cleaners have been targetted, with a view to break union organization.
A lively picket of the 15 Park Vista office was held with people from a variety of groups and unions brought together under the the banner of the Campaign against Immigration Controls. At the same time a number of concerned citizens entered the foyer of the premises in case the ISS managers were unable to hear the message properly. However the managers lost their cool and called the police, while refusing to allow in union reps, who had arrived separately. They argued that the picket was upsetting the neighbourghood peace and quiet, while demonstrators argued back that the detentions and deportations and union busting their paper checks cause is a bit more upsetting. One protestor was arrested and is currently out on bail.
Undeterred the cleaners will be on strike again from 21 August at 5.30 am till 23 August. This time support is expected from cleaners in Unite-T&G and coincidentally engineers on Tubelines will be on strike at the same time.
ISS will talk to the RMT at ACAS on Monday morning. This is the first time they have agreed to talk to the union since the dispute for the London Living Wage began. The RMT is calling a demonstration at 9.30am on Monday outside the ACAS offices, opposite Borough tube.
A public meeting on these and all current tube disputes is to be held by the RMT union at Friends House Euston Road on Tuesday 19 August at 6pm.
Also see these reports
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/407016.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/07/feminist-fightback-women...
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/08/23/justice-4-tube-cleaners-t...

Starbucks gets a picket from London syndicalists - http://gda.iwa-ait.org/ and http://grsbuxunion.blogspot.com/

On Thursday 24th April, Monica, a barista in the central Seville branch of Starbucks, was fired without notice for creating problems with her workmates. She had worked there for a year and a half. She had been active in organising with the CNT and defending her rights. The store manager told her on several occasions that she must have nothing to do with unions. She is a member of the Commerce Union of the CNT, in Spain. The CNT is demanding her reinstatement.

Barely a month later, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, Starbucks fired barista Cole Dorsey on June 6th. Cole had over 2 years of service and was active in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union. The National Labor Relations Board in the US has already made the firm rehire two sacked workers in 2006, and are looking at Starbucks latest violation.

Today london syndicalists met the call for an international day of action, and London Solidarity Federation joined with London Industrial Workers of the World to picket a flagship 2 story starbucks in New Oxford St. The picket lasted an hour and turned roughly half of the shops' potential customers away by telling people what Starbucks were up to abroad and at home [in 2005 they were forced to reinstate a sacked IWW member after union action in Leicester]. A reassuringly large number of people from all backgrounds responded by saying they supported the right to organise and believed in unions, and the vast majority who went in were foreign tourists who didn't understand the picketers. Two potential customers were so convinced they dropped their plans for overpriced coffee and actually joined the picket itself!

As the shop began to empty out the manager came out to tell us to leave, which didn't happen, and he was disappointed to discover from the 2 police officers that no laws were being broken either. All in all a successful show of solidarity for the folks on the continent and colonies!

On 24th of April, our comrade Mónica, a barista at the multinational Starbucks, was fired.

The district manager himself, Tomas Pinto, recognized the unfairness of the dismissal, and declared that her "profile was not suitable for what they were looking for". The surprising thing is that he drew that conclusion after she had been working for the company for a year and a half.

The fact is that Mónica was starting to organize the CNT Union Section at the company. She
did not notify her union membership and her position of Delegate of the Union Section, but during all her time in the company she fought for her rights and dignity as a worker. For example, during the Holy Week she refused to double her working shift because the shop manager did not tell her if it was going to be paid ovetime.

She also refused to attend periodic meetings outside working time which were not paid. But the most serious problem came when the managers found out that she has been asking her workmates for the telephone number of a fired worker. The shop manager told her that she should not have anything to do with trade unions. A few days later she was fired.

It is not the first time that Starbucks puts down workers. In the United States of America this company has a great history of dismissals and union busting against the workers of the revolutionary union IWW (Industrial Workers of the World).

From the Union of Commerce of the CNT of Sevilla we are not going to allow union busting
against our comrade, and we are going to fight for her reinstatement. The CNT declared war against Starbucks, and we are starting an international campaign with the solidarity of the International Workers Association and other grassroots unions such as the IWW.

We call all the CNT unions and all the IWA sections to support the campaign in the following
manner:

1. Send lots of emails to the company (hschultz@starbucks.com and atencionalcliente@starbucks.com) in solidarity.

We propose the following text: MONICA READMISION. BASTA DE REPRESION SINDICAL / REINSTATE MONICA. STOP UNION BUSTING

2. Organize demonstrations, pickets, and other solidarity actions against Starbucks premises.

3. We are organizing a Global Day of Action against Starbucks for the 5th of July, 2008. We will
protest against the anti-union policy of the company, which manifests in Monica's dismissal and the union busting that the IWW workers are suffering in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA).

Anarchosyndicalist greetings

Borja Duarte
Secretary of Union Action. Union of Commerce. CNT-AIT Sevilla

A top London restaurant paid only £1.50 an hour to a kitchen porter.

Cesare Copeta, a member of the Solidarity Federation's South London local, was employed by The Food Room, owners of The French Table restaurant in Surrey and the Tom Ilic restaurant in Battersea, which is currently listed in Time Out's Top 50 London restaurants.

He was employed as a kitchen porter at the Tom Ilic restaurant and had applied for the job through an advertisement in the Department of Work and Pension's Jobcentre Plus database.

He worked 50 hours over a 2 week shift, but was then paid only £75. Having been paid only £1.50 per hour, he walked out of the job in disgust.

The South London local of Mr Copeta's union, Solidarity Federation, wrote to the employer to inform him of our member's legal entitlement to the National Minimum Wage, payment for wrongful dismissal and accrued holiday pay and organised a picket outside the restaurant. At the start of the picket, the employer agreed to pay the member his wages at a little over the rate set at the National Minimum Wage and has also paid the member's accrued holiday pay.

The South London local are continuing its actions to recoup our member's pay in lieu of a weeks notice for wrongful dismissal. Its secretary said "The catering industry is riddled with long hours, low pay and shady practices. This is a far cry from the glamorous world of celebrity chefs. We are determined to help workers do something about the conditions they face."