Campaigns

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.

Activists picketed the Institute of Directors on Pall Mall this lunchtime to protest against the suspension of cleaners working for Amey PLC at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington.
The action comes as five cleaners at the NPL wait for the results of a disciplinary hearing after they were suspended for the crime of, er, being in a union and trying to let other NPL staff know what has been going on in the cleaning department. This is the latest in a series of measures taken against the cleaners since Amey, which is owned by Spanish multinational Ferrovia, took over the cleaning contract in May 2007 and found itself faced with a largely Latin American migrant workforce that had recently unionised and was taking steps to gain recognition – something afforded to all other NPL staff. The first came last year, when the company invited workers to a ‘training session’, only to bolt the doors behind them and leave them in the care of the Home Office, which promptly deported three of them, one to Colombia and two to Brazil, for not having official documents.
Pots and pans, dustbin lids, whistles and voices created a wall of noise outside the ‘Nanofinance 2008’ event, held at the Institute and attended by representatives of the NPL, as activists handed out leaflets and talked to participants, including NPL staff, some of who expressed solidarity with the cleaners.
Full report http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2008/09/409533.html

How do the various anarcho syndicalist federations of the world co-ordinate?

By means of the International Workers Association (IWA). In a world congress at which the delegations of the different sections meet, an international secretariat is elected. The IWA is able to structure itself by continents.

The management and administration of the different committees: The plenaries. Limitations of the charges in the CNT

Already we have spoken of the various limitations that the committees in the anarcho-syndicalist union have, in order to prevent the aspiration of a bureaucracy and new forms of power: In summary these are:

- Persons that form part of the committees cannot receive pay for their services. These activities are always voluntary and disinterested?.

- The charges are of management (development of recommended tasks) and administration. They cannot decide over and above the unions.

- The charges are revocable and accountable at any time.

- They have a maximum consecutive duration of three years.

- They are rotated.

- They are at the disposal of each assembly.

- The committees cannot make proposals in the anarcho-syndicalist union. These always start from the unions.

- The committees represent to the anarcho-syndicalist union as a whole. They do have have their own opinions. Its public demonstrations must co-incide with the general agreements of the confederation.

- All commitees have to be approved by another vote after their election – members of political parties cannot be members of the committees.

- The committees have to account for their management in each assembly.

- The meetings of the different committees (local, regional, national) are called Plenaries (local, regional and national). They cannot make agreements. They manage technical questions and carry out the agreements of the unions and the tasks that are entrusted to the committee.

Examples (debatable all them)

Your union decides to carry out a cultural conference. It recommends to the Press secretary to seek for lecturer X. In conversations with X, the Press secretary agrees to the conference for a specific day that can assist this person. The management is correct, as it is not necessary to convene an assembly to decide a date when a management takes place, if one has not said to you anything to the contrary.

Your union elaborates a plan of security and hygiene and entrusts to the secretary of union action to receive information. The secretary of union action by free iniative, has an interview with the Delegate of Security and Hygience in your workplace, in order to solicit to this body documentation about the matter. This is the carrying out of a management [arrangement]. The secretary has initiative and capacity to organise its management [arrangement]..

They have sacked a comrade. The secretary of law carries out negotiations with the boss in order to obtain her re-instatement, in accordance with the union and the person affected. The secretary of law does not do more that carrying out a management that is implicit in his or her charge.

The local committee of your union proposes to the assembly new local opening hours. Never. One cannot consent to any committee making proposals as such committee – for (dull anondyne) that they are, to the assembly of the union, is a meeting of affiliates.

The local committee finds out that they have imprisoned three comrades that had occupied a local. Apart from the legal negotiations, and in the face of the lack of time in order to convene assemblies, the local committee decides to convene a demonstration demanding freedom for the comrades, that have already been moved to another locality. The decision is correct. A committee has capacity to decide in cases of extreme danger and urgent necessity. In the following assembly, the affliation will decide if the decision was justified in these conditions and if the committee must continue in its charges.

Of course the examples are thousands, and many people will not like the possible solutions that we have given here, and they will shuffle others, such validity or more as those that are presented here. It is however complex in occasions to determine that which is management and that which is decision. Doubts and polemics arise – with absolute certainty they will arise – over whether the management entrusted is correct or the person has exceeded his/her mandate, for this there are the assemblies, which are the decision-making bodies in the anarcho-syndicalist union.

Conferences

Conferences are meetings of militants at local, regional or national level. The people that attend them cannot make agreements. A conference is a place open to discussion and exposition of all types of opinions in general and they serve so that we have an idea of how the anarcho-syndicalist union thinks in a specific moment. It discussions pass next to the unions so that they can be studied. The conferences have the advantage over assemblies in that in them they listen to all the opinions and tendencies, whilst that in an assembly it can have attitudes that remain in minority. At the conference people attend that represent themselves or another body or union. They cannot make agreements.

The Federation of Industry

All unions of the same branch that exist in the territory controlled by the Spanish State form a National Federation of Industry.

This super structure the described diagram towards now based in unions of bnach or general industries of one locality or regional, that are co-ordinated in order to form a local or regional federation, that are united in order to form the region, the regions in order to give place to the anarcho-syndicalist union, and the various anarcho-syndicalist unions in order to create the IWA. One finds in a diagram based in the geographical proximity.

The federation of industry leans on the similarity of the branch. All the industrial unions of, for example, the metal industry, unite themselves and co-ordinate at the national level, or global level in order to form the National or International Federation of Metal Industries. The idea is very simple. Global capitalism having organised itself by means of multinationals that dominate great numbers of workers over national frontiers. It follows that if a conflict emerges in the FASA RENAULT in France, the employer can move its production to its subsidiaries in other places where labour is cheaper and has less social conflicts. In this way they can resist indefinitely the pressures of their employees, to make them give up with the threat of restructure, lockout, etc. In front of this the Federation of Metal Industries will be able, that will occupy to give a united response to the employer over artificial national boundaries and will not allow other subsidiaries of the same employer, in other places or the same, to supply production of the affected factory, or it will unleash a strike in the sector, etc. as the case may be (according ? to be enough the case)

An Industrial Federation is based on the grouping of unions that operate in the same branch or industry.
The basic diagram of the CNT (Branch union, local/regional/national/international federation) are organised by geographical space.

The Industrial Federation is a body that is organised with unions of the same industry over the geographical space.

An industrial federation of the CNT has autonomy to act in all those problems that are proper. It nominates its representatives and they are present in meetings of all levels that celebrate? the different national or regional confederations, with voice but without vote.

In the period that we find ourselves in (has touched us to live), the industrial federations of the CNT carry an eventful existence through lack of economic and human resources. Our Industrial Federations do not stop to be a desire and in reality we do not have any good definition the ways to finance them, and those that we have exist thanks to the many volunteers that give them the persons that compose them. They are also denominated with the more modest name of Co-ordination of Industry. (or Industrial Networks).

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!

Ten things your boss does not want you to know

Regardless of work status (temporary, permanent, full or part time) and regardless of contract type, most of us are entitled to certain basic statutory rights. Among others you have the right to:

• Right to wages at least £4.85 per hour (£4.10 for workers aged 18 – 21 years). From October 2005, the rate at least £5.05 per hour (and similarly, £4.25 for workers aged 18-21).
• Right to at least 4 weekly paid holidays throughout the year
• Right to at least 20 minute breaks after each 6 hours of work
• Right to refuse to work over 48 hours weekly
• Right to sickness benefit in case of illness
• Right to maternity benefit and maternity leave for child birthhood.
• Right to carry out work in conditions free from racial or sexual harassment.
• Right to join trade unions as well as the right to form trade unions in your workplace
• Right to time off work in order to care for persons remaining in our maintenance
• Right to protection in front of dismissal with [grozacym] us with cause test [wyegzekwowania]entitled to our statutory work rights.

These are just some of the statutory employment rights. If you need more information on this subject, contact us at “Solidarity Federation”, contact your local Citizens Advice Bureau or contact your trade union. Information on the the subject of employment rights regulations are also available at libraries and on the internet.

On the government internet website http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/individual.htm [znajdziesz] most exhaustive and current information on the subject of employment rights regulations.

Temporary Work and Employment Agencies

Law [dorywcze] is currently very speading work status in Great Britain. About 2 million workers work on a “temporary” basis (excluding those employed for a specific time period). Most workers are employed temporarily or by agency, not having self-employed status, that is, working on own their account (self-employed), but have employment status and have rights similar to workers employed on different conditions.

Depending on the type of your contract of employment and the way you are paid, your employer agency will be an employment agent or employment business. Both, in the case of employment agencies and employment business, have certain obligations with respect to their employees, that is, you.

There is also legal regulations to regulate the activities of employment agencies.

Regulations require agencies to: