Posts Tagged ‘Conditions of Service’

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023

On Saturday 3rd January 2015 I photographed two protests. First was a vigil following the suicide of a transgender teenage girl and the second another protest in the long series of actions calling on John Lewis to pay their cleaners a living wage.

Vigil for Leelah Alcorn – Trafalgar Square, Saturday 3rd January 2015

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners

Leelah Alcorn was a 17-year-old who threw herself under a lorry after her Christian parents forced her into ‘conversion therapy’, refusing to acknowledge her gender and forbidding her from transitioning.

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners

Before her death Leelah had written a poignant suicide note on her Tumblr blog blaming her Christian parents, saying that from the age of four she had felt she was “like a girl trapped in a boy’s body” and describing her relief when she found the possibility of transgender transitions – but her feeling of hopelessness after she realised that her parents “would never come around” to her transition.

Transgender Rights & Justice For the Cleaners
Roz Kaveney reads her poem for Leelah Alcorn

Leelah wrote: “The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights.”

“Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say ‘that’s f**ked up’ and fix it. Fix society.“

Even after her suicide her parents remained unwilling to accept her transition, burying her with a gravestone under her former name ‘Joshua’.

Those taking part in the vigil included a number of people who had also transitioned as well as other supporters of transgender rights. Speakers condemned the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ which has no basis in medical science and carries a high risk of suicide, calling for it to be banned and for those carrying it out to be prosecuted. It is already banned in some US states. They also demanded that her gravestone carry her chosen name of Leelah.

The protest ended with the lighting of candles and a two minute silence in memory of Leelah.

More at Vigil for Leelah Alcorn

Pay John Lewis Cleaners a Living Wage – Oxford St, Saturday 3rd January 2015

Members of the Cleaners And Facilities Branch of the IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) protested along with John Lewis customers protested outside the flagship Oxford St John Lewis store calling for them to live up to their ethical reputation and pay those who keep the shop clean a living wage. The cleaners complain the company treats them as second class citizens.

They were also protesting at the assaults on protesters by police at their previous month’s protest inside the store, where many were attacked as they were trying to leave after a peaceful protest. This time the protesters made no attempt to enter the store which was guarded by a line of police and extra security officers, but protested on the wide pavement outside.

Over 125,000 John Lewis customers had signed a petition calling on the company to ensure that it live up to its ethical reputation and ensure that the cleaning contractor pays all cleaners working in the store the London Living Wage. Neither John Lewis or the contractor recognise the IWGB as representing the workers, although it is the registered trade union which almost all the cleaners belong to.

As well as not being paid enough to live on, the cleaners have much poorer conditions of service than the directly employed staff they work alongside – who also get a large annual bonus as “partners” in the business. By outsourcing the cleaning John Lewis is refusing responsibility for work done in its store and vital for its running. They could include conditions for proper pay and conditions for the cleaners in the specification of their contracts but fail to do so.

IWGB (Independent Workers Union of, Great Britain) General Secretary Alberto Durango

The protest was led by IWGB General Secretary Alberto Durango and President Jason Moyer-Lee. There were short speeches of support by others including Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, (Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb) and Mick Dooley of London TUSC, as well as a great deal of noisy shouting and blowing of horns.

Green Party London Assembly member Jenny Jones, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Many of the public on busy Oxford Street took the flyers being handed out and expressed support for a proper wage for the workers and disgust at the failure of John Lewis to treat them properly.

After around an hour and a quarter the event ended with a march around the outside of the large building, with security and police rushing inside the shop to meet them at every door. But even though the protesters sometimes arrived before them, they made no attempt to go inside.

More pictures at Pay John Lewis Cleaners a Living Wage

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Housing, Fukushima, Dolphins, Poppies, Deloitte & Royal Opera House

Monday, November 7th, 2022

Friday 7th November 2014 was an unusually long and busy day for me in London.

Brent Housing Sit-in – South Kilburn Housing Office, Friday 7th November 2014

My day began outside the South Kilburn Housing Office where campaigners were calling for Brent to end selling properties to overseas investors while rehousing local residents outside the area. They accuse the Labour council of social cleansing and say people need to be put before profit. Soon they moved into the office and sat with their posters in the lobby.

There is a huge amount of ‘regeneration’ taking place in council estates in Brent, but the new properties are is largely advertised and sold off to people from outside the borough – including to wealthy investors abroad who often will leave the properties empty while London house prices rise, selling them after a few years at a high profit. It’s easier to sell empty properties than to have the bother of sitting tenants, though generally these can be easily evicted.

The campaigners included Isabel Counihan Sanchez and other members of the Housing 4 All campaign which grew out of the Counihan family campaign and Unite Community members. The result of profit-led regeneration process is social cleansing – with people from Brent having to move to outer London or away from London altogether because they cannot afford properties in the area. Often they have to move into private rented accommodation with little or no security of tenure on short-term contracts, where landlords often fail to do repairs and evict tenants who complain.

What residents of Brent (and other boroughs need), as the campaigner’s posters stated is ‘Social Housing Not Social Cleansing’, as in the previous century when philanthropic schemes – such as Peabody – and councils built houses and flats as social housing at rents that are actually affordable to people on low or minimum wage.

Brent Housing Sit-in

Fukushima Nuclear Protest – Japanese Embassy, Friday 7th November 2014

From Brent I travelled to the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly, where a small group of Japanese and English protesters were handing out bi-lingual Japanese/English fliers about the continuing danger from radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power station.

Their weekly lunchtime protests here call for an end to the building of nuclear power stations worldwide because of the safety risks that Fukushima has highlighted, and for a proper investigation of the failures of TEPCO, the owners of the Fukushima power plant in running the plant and reporting and tackling the catastrophe. Later they left to protest at the nearby offices of TEPCO in Berkeley Square.

Fukushima Nuclear Protest

Taiji Dolphin slaughter protest – Japanese Embassy, Friday 7th November 2014

I remained outside the embassy where a crowd of several hundred as calling on Japan to halt the annual slaughter of 20,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales each year in Taiji Cove, which had been taking place annually for around 40 years.

Those protesting included Ric O’ Barry, founder of the Dolphin Project and the maker of the film ‘The Cove’ which has shown the shocking reality of the dolphin slaughter to audiences around the world. Here he holds a poste ‘Enough Is Enough’.

The protest was remarkable for the number of hand drawn and painted posters and placards, as well as some 3D artworks. Many of those present accepted the offer of having their hands covered in red paint to represent the blood of the dolphins, which turns the water in the bay red during the slaughter.

Most of the protesters remained behind the barriers on the opposite side of the road to the embassy, but there was some tension between the police and a few who crossed the road to protest closer to the embassy doorway.

Taiji Dolphin slaughter protest

Trafalgar Square Poppy Memorial – Friday 7th November 2014

On my way to the next protest I changed buses at Trafalgar Square and stopped to look at Mark Humphrey’s brass ‘Every Man Remembered’ which had been unveiled there earlier in the day. Later I wrote about this bland and idealised image of an unknown soldier in Remembering the Dead on this site. To truly remember and honour the sacrifice our memorials might better show – in Seigfried Sassoon’s words – ‘Young faces bleared with blood, Sucked down into the mud‘. In my article I linked the another by Paul Mason in which he reminds us that the First World War actually ended when German sailors, soldiers and workers refused to fight.

Trafalgar Square Poppy Memorial

IWGB protest at Deloitte, Friday 7th November 2014

Another bus took me in into the City, where the IWGB (Independent Workers of Great Britain trade union) were protesting around Shoe Lane at Deloitte’s City offices. The cleaners in these are outsourced and employed by Serco who have suspended to workers for taking part in earlier protests over working conditions and staff shortages which have led to cleaners suffering from stress and back problems.

The cleaners had hoped to take security by surprise at the first of the offices they arrived at, but they were obviously prepared, and the cleaners could only play their drums, blow their horns and whistles, shout slogans and wave their flags in the courtyard outside, unfurling a large banner with the message ‘Solidarity. We Are Performing a SercoExorcism’.

Security managed to keep ahead of them as they visited and protested outside three nearby Deloitte offices. At the third, two City of London police officers grabbed Alberto Durango as he was speaking and tried to stop him protesting. IWGB members surrounded them, insisting that they had a right to lawful protest and eventually the police backed down. The IWGB marched on to protest at a fourth office, then marched back to Fleet St.

IWGB protest at Deloitte

IWGB protest at Royal Opera House, Friday 7th November 2014

By now I was rather hoping to say goodbye and go home, but as we arrived on Fleet St, Alberto Durango announced that the group would be marching on to pay a surprise visit to the Royal Opera House, were outsourced IWGB cleaners are in dispute with cleaning contractor Mitie over victimisation, trade union recognition and working conditions.

The cleaners moved quietly through the streets and rather surprised me as we arrived at the opera house by rushing into the foyer. A security guard grabbed hold of Alberto Durango but he pulled away from here and the rest of the group followed in and I went with them.

There they held a short protest with Alberto making clear their demands and calling on the Royal Opera House to support their cleaners and pressure Mitie who they have given the contract to to treat the cleaners properly. Opera House staff stood and listened and then the IWGB walked out. And at last I could go home.

IWGB protest at Royal Opera House

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Arctic 30, Gurkhas, Zombies & John Lewis

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022

Another busy day for me in London on Saturday 2nd November 2013, though I spent quite a lot of it in a pub with zombies who were putting on a rather late Halloween appearance. But there were more serious things as well.

Free Kieron & Arctic 30 – Russian Embassy, Notting Hill. Sat 2 Nov 2013

Family, friends & supporters of freelance videojournalist Kieron Bryan, one of the 30 arrested on Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise, held a silent vigil at the Russian Embassy, delivering a petition signed by over 1000 journalists calling for his release.

There was intense media interest in the event, with several TV crews, radio journalists and photographers, perhaps because the imprisonment of a journalist is a threat to all journalists around the world. Unusually the Russian embassy had agreed to meet Kieron’s brother and take the petition, and although no photography is permitted in the private street in which it (and the Israeli embassy) are situated I was able to photograph him standing in the gate to the street holding it.

The Arctic 30 had sailed to the Russian Arctic on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in September 2013 to protest peacefully against Gazprom’s plans to start oil production in the Arctic. The ship was seized and they were kept in custody for two months before being released on bail in November – after the Netherlands had filed a case at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea which led to an order for the crew and Dutch-registered vessel to be released while the case was being considered. Although Russia ignored this ruling they did release the journalists, activists and crew, and six months later, the ship. Probably protests such as this helped to persuade them to do so.

The Dutch government filed complaints at the European Court against the unlawful detention of the Dutch-registered ship and the protesters also took a case claiming that hey had been detained unlawfully and their right to freedom of expression had been breached.

Free Kieron & Arctic 30

Gurkha Veterans Hunger Strike for Justice – Downing St, Sat 2 Nov 2013

Gurkha wives and widows support the campaign for justice

Although high-profile earlier campaigns supported by Joanna Lumley and others in the broadcast media have led to increased support for former Gurkha soldiers, elderly Gurkha veterans did not benefit from these and most live here in extreme poverty.

After submitting their petition to Prime Minister David Cameron and the Nepalese Prime Minister in April and getting no satisfactory result and they had “with a heavy heart” begun a series of hunger strikes. These had begun in late October with a “13 days relay hunger strike in the name of the 13 Ghurka VCs” which was in progress when I took these pictures, demanding equal pensions, compensation, a preserved pension for those made redundant, the right of settlement in the UK for their adult children and free medical treatment in Nepal.

Five days later some began a hunger strike until death, and after two weeks the government offered talks and this was halted.

Gurkha Veterans Hunger Strike

LoNdOn ZoMbIE WaLk VII – Soho, Sat 2 Nov 2013

I met with around a hundred zombies in Waxy O’Connor’s pub on Rupert St, where they were drinking for a couple of hours occasionally emerging into the dim daylight of Wardour St for a fag break.

Around 4pm as dusk was falling the multitude of undead staggered up the stairs to begin their crawl around Londinium in search of brains and booze. I left them to it.

Among those on Gerrard Street were a group of Zombie Police whose warrant cards carried the message ‘A pint of Cider and Black Please’.

Announced as the seventh consecutive year for this event, it followed on from some earlier ‘Crawls of the Dead’ which began in 2004.

Inside the pub the lighting was low and I needed to use flash. While the Nikon flash gun I was using in the hot-shoe of my camera is generally a great performer I had some problems. While it is OK with the camera in landscape mode, turning the setup through 90 degrees for portrait format images isn’t really very successful. And I also found myself unable to use the usually magical i-TTL mode, not because of some zombie spells, but as later searches through the fat manual at home revealed it is incompatible with the camera mode I had set for the dark interior. I think the camera and flash manual have a total of well over 500 pages – these things are just too complicated for mortals.

LoNdOn ZoMbIE WaLk VII

City Link & Cleaners at John Lewis – Oxford St, Sat 2 Nov 2013

As the final zombies staggered out of the pub to crawl Soho I rushed away to Oxford Street where cleaners were holding a protest outside the flagship John Lewis Store, and were today joined by City Link workers who deliver goods for the company.

City Link was sold off earlier in the year to Jon Moulton’s private equity group ‘Better Capital’ and face pay cuts, enforced overtime, loss of bonus scheme and other changes. They were protesting with John Lewis’s cleaners who are fighting to get a living wage and better working conditions. Unlike other staff in the store who are directly employed by the company as ‘partners’ and share in the profits through a bonus scheme, cleaners are outsourced to a cleaning company and paid less than a pittance, with unsocial hours and poor conditions of service. John Lewis management wash their hands and say it it nothing to do with them.

City Link & Cleaners at John Lewis

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Zero Hours at Sports Direct, Cleaners at John Lewis Westfield

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022

Zero Hours at Sports Direct, Cleaners at John Lewis Westfield – On Saturday 3rd August 2013 I photographed one of many protests calling for an end to zero hours contracts at Sports Direct branches then hurried to Stratford, where a surprise protest inside the store demanding demanded that their cleaners get a living wage and be treated in the same way as other workers in the store.

End Zero Hours Contracts – Sports Direct, Oxford St

Over 85% of the 20,000 part-time staff at Sports Direct branches across the country were on Zero-hour contracts which deprived them of sick pay, holiday pay and other employment rights. These contracts have no guaranteed weekly hours or income and have now become widely used – including by Buckingham Palace and 13 out of 32 London Boroughs.

Essentially they deny the whole concept of a contract as normally understood, agreements without substance which gravely disadvantage workers. They provide no guaranteed weekly hours or income and are used to cut wages and avoid holiday pay and pensions. Despite no guarantee of any income, they oblige the workers to be available for work at the employer’s whim, making it impossible for them to take on other work.

Zero hours contracts are also illegal if they do not give workers the statutory minimum requirements for paid holidays, wages, sick pay, maternity pay etc, but these again are difficult to enforce. There are various types of zero hours contracts but all are essentially designed to exploit workers.

The protest started with around 50 people making a lot of noise on the pavement outside the shop and handing out leaflets to the many shoppers passing by. Many of those who took the leaflets expressed surprise that such contracts were legal – and a change in law in 2015 made it illegal for contracts to deny employees the possibility of working for another employer – though there is no effective mechanism to stop employers penalising workers who turn down shifts offered because they have another job at that time.

After around 50 minutes the protesters surged into the small street-level area of the store, intending to go down the escalator leading to the main store area. Security staff blocked their path and told them to stop, and they did. One security man tried to push a protester who complained he was being assualted but otherwise the situation remained calm, with people blocking the way to the escalators in protest being watched by police and security.

A police officer came to talk with one of the leading protesters, who made it clear they were taking care to cause no damage and would shortly leave after making their point. The officer retired and after a few minutes people left the store to continue the protest on the pavement for a few minutes before calling an end.

More at End Zero Hours Contracts – Sports Direct.

Cleaners in John Lewis Westfield – Westfield Centre, Stratford

I walked from Oxford Street to take the Central Line to Stratford where I met a group of members of the IWGB outside Stratford Station on their way to protest inside John Lewis. They have been conducting a long term campaign to get the cleaners in John Lewis stores to be treated like others who work on the shop floor.

John Lewis is very proud of the fact that its workers are ‘partners’, with higher pay and better benefits than other shop workers, getting a share in the company’s profits – in 2013 this was a bonus equivalent to nine weeks pay. But the staff who keep the store clean get low pay, lousy conditions of service and are generally treated like dirt by the contract company that employs them.

The cleaners want to be directly employed by John Lewis and so get a share in the profits and the better conditions. They were then getting £6.72 per hour, considerably less than the London Living Wage of £8.55 an hour set by the GLA and backed by the London Mayor, and only statutory sick pay, holidays and pensions from the contracting company which employed them.

Their claims are supported by many of the ‘partners’ they work alongside, and by many John Lewis customers. But the ‘partners’ are afraid to speak out; one of them, Ralph Ashley who worked at Stratford did so and urged his fellow workers to join the IWGB, and was targeted and sacked after he gave an interview to the Guardian. As well as their own demands, the protesters also demanded he get justice and be re-employed.

The IWGB members and supporters kept quiet as they moved through Stratford Westfield and made their way to to the third floor restaurant in the large John Lewis store where they got out banners, whistles, plastic trumpets and megaphones before moving out into the centre of the shop for a noisy protest.

Their noisy protest as they marched around the different levels of the store to make their way to the escalators handing out leaflets attracted a great deal of attention and they stopped occasionally to explain the protest and many stopped to watch and listen.

Eventually they reached the first floor ‘street’ level, holding a slightly longer protest there before moving outside. Here a small group of Westfield Security tried to stop the protest and to prevent me taking pictures both with little success. Eventually we left the enclosed street and went outside and around the side of the store.

As the protesters were packing up the police arrived and having been assured that this was a peaceful protest and that the protesters were about to leave took no further action.

Much more at Cleaners in John Lewis Westfield.

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A Busy Saturday – August 15th 2015

Sunday, August 15th, 2021


I began my working day rather later than the pickets outside the National Gallery, who held a short rally after picketing since the early morning on the 61st day of their strike against plans to outsource the jobs of 400 gallery assistants and the sacking of PCS union rep Candy Udwin for her union activities.
More at: National Gallery 61st day of Strike

A related protest against the privatisation of visitor assistants was taking place a little later outside Tate Modern on Bankside, with workers giving out leaflets calling for equal pay and conditions for outsourced and in-house workers at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London. Privatised staff doing the exactly the same job have zero hours contracts with no guarantee of regular work, get £3 an hour less, and do not get the decent pensions, sick pay and holidays enjoyed by their colleagues.
More at: Equalitate at Tate Modern

Back over the river to Aldwych and the Indian High Commission, where two protests were taking place on Indian Independence Day. Sikhs were supporting the call by hunger striker Bapu Surat Singh, now on hunger strike for over 200 days, calling for the release of Sikh political prisoners and other prisoners of all religions who have completed their jail terms but are still in prison.

Many of the Sikhs held posters of Gajinder Singh, a founding member Dal Khalsa which calls for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan, and they called for a referendum to be held in the Punjab and among the Sikh diaspora around the world on the setting up such as state.
More at: Sikhs call for release of political prisoners

Also protesting outside the Indian High Commission were a crowd of Kashmiris calling for freedom. Kashmir is a disputed territory with parts occupied by India, Pakistan and China, and since 1987 the Indian occupation has turned their area into one of the most militarised places in the world, with around one Indian soldier for every 14 Kashmiris.

Over 100,0000 Kashmiris have been killed since the current uprising against Indian occupation began in 1987, and torture is used as a mean to get confessions and terrorise the civilians including women and children. In Kashmir Indian Independence day is observed as ‘Black Day’.
More at: Kashimiris Independence Day call for freedom

Back in Trafalgar Square Iranian Kurds from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) remembered its fighters killed in the fight against Iran and ISIS for self-determination. Like the PKK, PJAK owes allegiance to Abdullah Öcalan and the ideals of the Rojava revolution.
More at: Kurdish PJAK remembers its martyrs

A few yards away, Koreans were holding their monthly silent protest for the victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy, mainly school children who obeyed the order to ‘Stay Put’ on the lower decks as the ship went down. They continue to demand that the Korean government raise the Sewol ferry for a thorough inquiry and punish those responsible as well as bringing in special anti-disaster regulations.
More at: 16th ‘Stay Put’ Sewol silent protest

Finally I made my way to Oxford Circus to meet members of the United Voices of the World and supporters including those from SOAS Unison, the National Gallery strikers, Class War and others who were marching to protest outside Sotheby’s in Old Bond St. The UVW werecampaigning for proper sick pay, paid holidays and pensions for the cleaners who work there, and so far Sotheby’s response had been to sack two of the union members, Barbara and Percy.

Police harassed the protesters as they arrived outside Sotheby’s, trying to move them off the road they were marching along and onto the pavement, and they responded by sitting down on the road and refusing the police orders to move. After some minutes they got up and marched around the block, past the rear entrance to Sotheby’s, with two union officials going into some of the shops on the way to hand out leaflets explaining the action. Police tried to stop these two going into the shops and some arguments developed.


The marchers returned to the street in front of Sotheby’s and held a short rally, again ignoring police who tried to move them off the road. Police then tried to stop them marching around the block again, holding some while others surged around and the marchers made another circuit, returning to Sotheby’s for a short final rally before marching back towards Oxford Circus.
More at: United Voices – Reinstate the Sotheby’s 2.

My day wasn’t quite over, and I moved to Grosvenor Square, where two young women, one black and one white, had organised a Black Lives Matter protest close to the US embassy in solidarity with events across the US against the collective and systemic unlawful arrests and killings of black people in America. The protest around the statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was supported by groups including BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts) and the Nation of Islam.

More at: BlackoutLDN solidarity with Black US victims.

In all the travelling around central London on foot or by bus, I had time to take a few pictures between protests.
More at: London Views.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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Low Pay, Lousy Conditions. 3rd Aug 2013

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021

IWGB are harassed by Westfield security after their protest in John Lewis

The two events I covered on Saturday 3rd August 2013 both concerned the fight to get decent wages and conditions for low paid workers in London, something which has largely been left to the left wing and grass roots unions to fight for rather than the big trade unions or the Labour Party.

Outside Sports Direct in Oxford St

The two major ways that low paid workers are cruelly exploited in modern Britain are through zero-hours contracts and outsourcing, and these were at the heart of the two protests.

Security stop protesters from going down the escalator in Sports Direct

The first, at Sports Direct in Oxford St called on the company to abandon the use of zero-hour contracts which deprive all their 20,000 part-time workforce (over 85% of staff) sick pay, holiday pay and other employment rights.

The protest continues inside Sports Direct

Zero hours contracts, as I explained on My London Diary “are a peculiar legal casuistry that in essence denies the whole concept of a contract as normally understood, agreements without substance which gravely disadvantage workers … Although they give no guarantee of any income, they oblige the workers to be available for work at the employer’s whim, making it impossible for them to take on other work.”

IWGB get out flags, placards and banners on the top floor of John Lewis

All the advantages are for the employer who has a contract which imposes great constraints on workers while denying them the employment rights which are a part of normal employment and leaving them open to the whims of managers as to whether they work or not. A limited reform in 2015 prohibited terms in them which prevented people working for other employers, but if that leads to them being unable to work when the employer demands them to, they may still find their hours very much reduced in future or their contracts terminated.

And begin their protest in John Lewis in Stratford Westfield

The protest was a noisy one and after around 50 minutes handing out leaflets and speaking to shoppers on the street outside, they surged into the small street level area of the shop, where they made no attempt to push post security men who stopped them at the entry to the escalator leading down to the main store. They continued the protest inside the store being careful not to cause any damage. After around five minutes one of the police officers who were watching came to talk to one of the leading protesters and was told they would leave shortly, and after a few more minutes they did, ending the protest on the pavement a few minutes later.

They take the escalator to continue the protest on the floor below

I made my way to Stratford to join the IWGB union who were making a surprise visit to protest inside the John Lewis store in Stratford Westfield. The cleaners there are outsourced to sub-contractor ICM of the Compass Group, who had recently announced pre-tax profits for the year of £575 million. They pay the cleaners £6.72 per hour, considerably less than the London Living Wage of £8.55 an hour set by the GLA and backed by the London Mayor.

Everyone in John Lewis could hear the protest and stopped to look and listen

Outsourcing enables John Lewis to distance itself from the low pay and poor conditions of service of these workers who share the workplace with the much-lauded John Lewis ‘partners’, who as well as higher pay and better benefits, also get a share in the company’s profits, enabling John Lewis to claim it is a ‘different sort of company’ with a strong ethical basis, but still leave its cleaners – a vital part of its workforce – on poverty wages.

I met the cleaners outside Westfield and walked with them through the shopping centre to John Lewis at its far end, trying with them to look inconspicuous. In the store we went up to the cafe area on the top floor where they got out banners, placards and a large megaphone from their bags and then proceeded to walk around in a noisy protest.

They then took the escalator to the floor below and walked around that making the case for a fair deal for the cleaners to management and customers. Among those protesting (centre, above) was a man who had been a ‘partner’ in the Westfield store and was dismissed after he gave an interview to The Guardian supporting the cleaners’ case for equal treatment, and he was greeted by many of his former colleagues on the shop floor.

I get told I can’t take photographs

After protesting on each floor of the store, there were a numbber of final speeches, including one by the dismissed ‘partner’, on the ground floor before the group left, going out into the Westfield Centre in front of John Lewis. Here they were met by the centre manager and security staff who tried to stop the protest, with some pushing them (and me) around. Here I was told I was not allowed to take pictures, but took little notice. Very slowly we all made our way out of the centre by the nearest exit, still followed by Westfield security, and were met by two police officers who were told the protest was finishing.

Many more pictures at:

Cleaners in John Lewis Westfield
End Zero Hours Contracts – Sports Direct

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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Cake, Yacht and Dodo

Thursday, July 15th, 2021

The cake came outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) where PCS members who work as cleaners and catering workers were beginning the first ever indefinite strike at a government ministry, demanding they be paid the London Living Wage, and get decent conditions of employment.

It was the third anniversary of the founding of the BEIS, and also the third anniversary of the campaign to get the workers there decent pay and to be employed directly by the BEIS, rather than outsourcing companies ISS and Aramark whose only concern is cutting costs to the bone by exploiting the workers so they can undercut competitors for the contracts and make profits at the workers’ expense.

A crowd of around a hundred supporters was there to cheer the strikers when they came out of the BEIS to begin their strike and there were speeches from trade unionists including PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka, RMT General Secretary Mick Cash, and UCU’s Jo Grady as well as then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP and some of the BEIS workers. I did manage to get a piece of the cake before I had to leave for the Royal Courts of Justice.

Extinction Rebellion had brought the yacht to to court to begin their ‘Summer Uprising’, another series of protests in five major cities against the criminal inaction by the government on climate and ecological collapse. The yacht was named Polly Higgins after the Scottish barrister who fought for years for an Ecocide Law and had died of cancer 3 months earlier, only 50.

When I arrived some kind of new age ceremony was taking place with people bringing water from across the country to pour into a large bowl and a Druid celebrant in long white robes. It’s one of the kind of things that makes it hard for many to take XR seriously as a movement.

But of course it is serious and the crisis that we face is existential. An ecocide law would be a powerful way to restrain some of the worst excesses of companies that are driving us to extinction. There were some good speeches at the event, with some very clear thinking, but also a few which made me cringe a little.

Eventually it was time to march, with the pink Dodo and the yacht, making our way across the river towards Waterloo where XR was to set up a camp on Waterloo Millenium Green.

There really is a climate and ecological emergency, with too many species going the way of the dodo, and we do need governments to tell the truth and make real and difficult actions to halt what seems an inevitable slide into irreversible heating which will make the world uninhabitable for many species, probably including our own. It’s time to end the kind of lip-service which has our government setting targets long into the future while ramping up disastrous policies like Heathrow expansion, road-building and coal mines.

The yacht went with them at the back of the procession, which halted for some time to block Waterloo Bridge, remembering the many arrests there in the previous XR protests, before continuing. It was then stopped by police on Waterloo Rd, causing far more rush hour traffic chaos than necessary by completely blocking the Waterloo roundabout. Eventually they were allowed to continue and occupy the green space they were heading for, but by that time I had left and walked into Waterloo station to catch my train home.

XR Summer Uprising procession
XR call for Ecocide Law
BEIS workers begin indefinite strike

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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