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Lettings Scam, Bears, Bahrain & John Lewis – 2012

Lettings Scam, Bears, Bahrain & John Lewis: Saturday 14th July 2012 was another day I spent travelling to protests around London. On the Holloway Road Harringey Private Tenants Action Group protested against letting agents who take hundreds of pounds from people looking for homes but do nopthing for them, PETA marched from Waterloo to Marble Arch against bears being killed to make busbys for the guards, a protest at the Bahraini embassy in Belgrave Square against killing and jailing of political prisones. Finally I went to John Lewis in Oxford Street where cleaners were calling to be recognised as partners in the business and to be paid the London Living Wage.

Tenants Protest Letting Agents Scam – Drivers & Norris, Holloway Rd

Lettings Scam, Bears, Bahrain & John Lewis - 2012

I photographed protesters standing in the rain outside letting agents Drivers & Norris on Holloway Road, condemning them for taking over £300 from home seekers and providing nothing return but refusing to return the payment.

Harringey Private Tenants Action Group stated:

Agency ‘fees’, reference ‘checks’, admin ‘fees’, leaving ‘fees’ are all costs that have been created over the past few years by and for Letting Agents like Drivers and Norris, to increase their profits and exploit the basic nee of tenants to find a home. We, as private tenants, will not accept this anymore. We have a right to really affordable, secure and decent housing just like anyone else.

Police came and tried to get the protesters to end their protest, claiming it might distract drivers on the busy main road. The protesters told the police firmly that they were simply trying to suppress lawful protest and if they considered there was any real danger they should divert traffic from the area and that instead of wasting police time here they should be investigating the Drivers & Norris scam rather than harassing protesters.

I commented that there was no real reason for any police presence as there was “unlikely to be any breach of the peace. But I suppose it was an easy number to drink tea in the estate agents“.

On My London Diary I pointed out that agents had profited enormously from high property prices in London, now well above what people on average or lower wages can afford, and that successive governments had weakened the security of private tenants and cut the provision of social housing creating the current dire housing problems. Many new developments were also being aimed at overseas investors to enable them to take advantage of the rapidly rising property prices while often leaving the properties empty.

Tenants Protest Letting Agents Scam

PETA ‘Spare the Bears’ March – Marble Arch

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) had stated:

It can take the entire hide of one Canadian black bear to make just one cap. Bears can be shot several times before they die, and some escape and bleed to death. In some Canadian provinces, there are no restrictions on the shooting of mothers who have nursing cubs, leading to the slaughter of entire families during hunts.

We need to send a clear message to the Ministry of Defence that the slaughter of wildlife for The Queen’s Guards’ ceremonial headwear is unacceptable and that the time has come for them to go fake for the bears’ sake.

I’d called in to the start of the march next to the Shell Centre at Waterloo before going to Haringey, but hadn’t taken any pictures, deciding instead to meet them at the end of the march. It took them much longer than they had expected and I’d almost given up when I saw them coming up Park Lane and rushed to take pictures.

It was perhaps a too regimented protest with so many identical placards and bear masks provided by PETA which made it difficult for me to find anything really different to photograph.

They had also been asked to wear black clothes, but at least had been told to bring their own teddy bears.

More pictures at PETA ‘Spare the Bears’ March

Solidarity with the Bahraini prisoners – Bahraini embassy, Belgrave Square

The Al Khalifa family has ruled Bahrain since the late 1700s and in 1820 made a treaty with Britain – since renewed on various occasions, becoming a British protectorate. The country became independent in 1971 – when the USA took over what had previously been the Royal Navy base – and the family is still in power.

Various attempts to extend democracy in Bahrain led to little change in the ruling family’s control and to an uprising in 2011 with large protests and a brutal crackdown with many protesters tortured and around 120 killed. Mohammad Rahdi Mahfoodh was one of the ‘martyrs’ and was hit by a police vehicle and died from deliberate lack of care in a military hospital and mourners at his funeral were attacked.

Speakers at the protest including Jeremy Corbyn were there and people were still arriving for the protest opposite the embassy which was just beginning when I had to leave for my next event.

More pictures at Solidarity with the Bahraini prisoners.

John Lewis cleaners step up protest – Oxford St

The flagship John Lewis store on Oxford Street is cleaned by people employed by Integrated Cleaning Management (ICM) who employ them on far worse conditions than if they were directly employed by John Lewis, and on the legal minimum wage, then more than two pounds an hour below the London living wage.

Unlike others who work in the store the cleaners do not take part in the bonus scheme in which John Lewis shares its profits with its workers (the ‘partners’) although their work is essential to the operation of the store.

The cleaners also complain about poor management by ICM with discrimination and abuse at work, and are currently threatened by a 50% cut in their hours.

They had been long campaigning for equality of treatment and to be directly employed by the company they actually work for – John Lewis – and had held a one-day strike the previous day which had ended with a rally and a brief invasion of the store, though had caused no damage. But this perhaps explained the large numbers of police present, with small groups around each of the shop entrances.

John Lewis senior management watched the noisy but peaceful protest from inside the store. The management were still refusing to talk with the cleaners Union, and another one-day strike was caused the following week.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at John Lewis cleaners step up protest.

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IWW Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’, Occupy & London, 2012

IWW Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’, Occupy & London: On Friday 10th February 2012 I came to London to photograph a rush hour protest calling for the reinstatement of an office cleaner sacked for his union activities. I came early to wander a little from Waterloo and pay a visit to Occupy London on the way there, and also took a few pictures on my way home after the protest.

IWW Cleaners Demand ‘Reinstate Alberto’ – Heron Tower, Bishopsgate

IWW Demand 'Reinstate Alberto', Occupy & London, 2012

Cleaners were protesting outside the 230 metre tall Heron Tower (now Salesforce Tower) at 110 Bishopsgate, completed in 2007 when it then was the tallest building in the City of London.

Alberto Durango
IWW Demand 'Reinstate Alberto', Occupy & London, 2012 — *Alberto Durango speaks outside Heron Tower*

The protest called for the reinstatement of IWW Branch Secretary Alberto Durango who had been sacked, victimised for his trade union activities, after the cleaning contract for the building had been taken over by a new contractor, Incentive FM Group Ltd.

Alberto who worked as a cleaner in the Heron Tower had become well known for his campaigning activities in and around the City of London, which have helped to secure better working conditions and the London Living Wage for many of the cleaners who work in London’s prestigious offices. He was then the Industrial Workers of the World Cleaners and Allied Trades Branch Secretary and in 2011 had won the fight for workers at Heron Tower to be paid the London Living Wage and an agreement with the then employer that there would be no redundancies there with any staff reductions needed being made by transfers to alternative posts.

Under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) the new employer should have continued to recognise this agreement. Instead they refused to do so and picked on Alberto, making him redundant.

The same management also controlled Exchange Tower where the IWW were carrying out a campaign to get cleaners the London Living Wage and where they have taken a very aggressive stance against the union, threatening the union members. The protesters connected Alberto’s sacking with his role there as union Branch Secretary.

This was a very loud protest with speakers using a powerful megaphone and drummers from Rhythms of Resistance adding their loud beats as office workers from Heron Tower and the many other offices in the area were making their way home in the evening rush hour.

The pavement outside the area owned by Heron Tower on Bishopsgate is relatively narrow and police rightly insisted that there needed to be a clear route along it for workers to get past without having to step into the busy road. So my 15mm fisheye lens was extremely useful, though it does make the area look much more spacious than it was.

In February the protest began a quarter of an hour after sunset, and light was fading fast. Although the City streets are generally well light both from street lighting and by the light from the huge areas of glass on the front of modern buildings I used added lighting for many of the pictures, either with a hand held LED light or flash on camera. But neither light source can cover the 180 degree diagonal view of the fisheye and those pictures rely on available light only. Its f2.8 maximum aperture helped – and it was a stop faster than the wide-angle zoom used for almost all the other images. In some at least of the pictures I think the fish-eye effect works well too.

More at IWW Cleaners Demand Reinstate Alberto.

Occupy London & Other Pictures – St Paul’s Cathedral

Although there were still plenty of tents in St Paul’s Churchyard as I walked through they were all tightly closed and the occupiers were still out protesting the music anti-piracy proposals at the British Music House in Soho.

I was a disappointed at not meeting any of them, although I hadn’t arranged to do so and it did allow me to take a few pictures of the site without any distractions, though by the time I’d wandered there taking a few pictures on the way including from the Millenium footbridge I was in a hurry to get to the Heron Tower.

After the protest at the Heron Tower I took a bus back to Westminster and made a few pictures in the subway leading from the station to the Houses of Parliament and under the Emabankment towards the Thames before walking across the bridge and to Waterloo Station.

More pictures Occupy London Still At St Pauls.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Letting Agents, Bears, Bahrain & John Lewis

Letting Agents, Bears, Bahrain & John Lewis: Four protests on what started out as a very wet day in London on Saturday 14th July 2012.

Tenants Protest Letting Agents Scam – Drivers & Norris, Holloway Rd

My working day began on the pavement outside letting agents Drivers & Norris on Holloway Road, condemning them for having taken over £300 from home seekers and providing nothing return but refusing to return the payment.

Some of the members of the Harringey Private Tenants Action Group taking part in the protest had paid upfront fees of £300 in cash to secure new flats, but the company had failed to provide them with any offers of accommodation but had refused to return the fee.

Drivers & Norris and other companies say that the cost is to cover the reference checks that they have to make, but these cost them around £19. The fees are simply a scam to increase the company profits at the expense of poor and vulnerable people in need of housing.

Police arrived and attempted to get the protesters to stop, suggesting it might distract drivers on the busy main road and cause an accident. It seemed simply another attempt by the police to suppress the right to lawful protest and to take the side of the wealthy against the poor. The protesters of course refused to stop and the officers went in to drink tea with the estate agents leaving the small peaceful protest to continue.

My comment back in 2012 “Agents have profited greatly from the lack of affordable housing in the London area, with property prices well above anything that anyone on an average wage can afford. Coupled with a systematic attack by successive governments on the security of private tenants and on the provision of social housing over more than 30 years this has resulted in a dire shortage of housing for ordinary people in London and the south-east. Even where housing developments are taking place in London, the properties are often many bought by overseas investors interested in high profits in an overheated housing market.” Things since then have got worse.

More at Tenants Protest Letting Agents Scam.

PETA ‘Spare the Bears’ March – Marble Arch

From Holloway Road I rushed down to Marble Arch on the Underground to meet the PETA march as it arrived there from its start close to Waterloo. I’d gone there before going to Haringey, but hadn’t found anything I thought worth photographing in the steady rain, so had gone away to return to the march later.

PETA was demanding an end to killing of bears for the Queen’s Guards’ ceremonial headwear. It takes the skin of a whole black bear to make a busby, and they are cruelly hunted. They say some bears escape after being shot several times and bleed to death and that in “some Canadian provinces, there are no restrictions on the shooting of mothers who have nursing cubs, leading to the slaughter of entire families during hunts.”

The MoD still takes 100 bear skins a year from Canadian hunters and justifies its refusal to move to using synthetic materials by saying “one has come remotely close to matching the natural properties of bear fur in terms of shape, weight and its ability to repel moisture in wet conditions.” Perhaps we should just stop dressing parts of our army as toy soldiers.

More pictures PETA ‘Spare the Bears’ March.

Solidarity with the Bahraini prisoners – Bahraini embassy, Belgrave Square

A short bus ride and walk took me to the Bahraini embassy where protesters were gathering to call for the release of prisoners in Bahrain, to condemn the killing of Mohammad Rahdi Mahfoodh and attacks on his funeral, and for an end to the puppet regime of the Bedouin Al Khalifa tribe.

I arrived as the protest was beginning and some of the protesters and speakers including Jeremy Corbyn had arrived.

But unfortunately I had to leave for the cleaners’ protest in Oxford St before things really got going and before the main speeches from Corbyn and others.

Solidarity with the Bahraini prisoners

John Lewis cleaners step up protest – Oxford St

I had been at the flagship John Lewis store on Oxford Street the previous day when their cleaners were taking a day of strike action, with a rally and a brief invasion of the store, the first strike at John Lewis since it became the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) following a strike in 1920.

The cleaners have been in dispute with the JLP for some years, campaigning for their service to the company to be recognised and to be treated like the other workers there who are ‘partners’ and benefit from an annual bonus from the company profits. They also are demanding to be paid the London Living Wage. Rather then directly employ its cleaning staff JLP has outsourced them to Integrated Cleaning Management (ICM).

*A woman stops to photograph the protest*

The strike was precipitated when ICM announced there would be a 50% cut in jobs and hours to clean the store, and refused to pay the living wage. ICM also refuse to recognise the IWW, officially recognised as a trade union in the UK in 2006, for collective bargaining, although almost all the cleaners are now members.

ICM is part of the Compass Group, and the IWW point out this had pre-tax profits of £581 million in the last year and paid its chairman Sir Roy Gardner £477,000 pa. They also say that Gardner is a major donor to Conservative Party funds, and gave £50,000 to Cameron’s election campaign.

Today police had arrived in advance of the protest and were stationed in small groups at each of the shop entrances. Behind those at the main entrance watching the rally cleaners pointed out to me one of the JLP management who scurried away as soon as he saw my camera pointing in his direction – but not before I had photographed him.

Despite talks that have dragged on for some years, John Lewis still refuses to accept that it should treat its cleaners with the same decency as its other workers, hiding behind the fact that they are not the actual employers although the cleaners work in their store and are essential to its running.

The cleaners were employed by ICM on the legal minimum wage, more than two pounds an hour below the London Living Wage, a figure representing the minimum needed to live in London. This is calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation, overseen by the Living Wage Commission and was in 2012 backed by both London Mayor Boris Johnson and Prime Minister David Cameron.

The rally on the pavement in front of the shop was peaceful but lively and noisy and received a great deal of support from shoppers passing by on the busy street including John Lewis customers. The cleaners were to strike again the following Friday with further protests outside the store then and on every Saturday afternoon.

Friday protest Cleaners Strike at John Lewis
Saturday protest John Lewis cleaners step up protest

‘3 Cosas’ – Sick Pay, Holidays & Pensions

‘3 Cosas’ – Sick Pay, Holidays & Pensions – Senate House, London

Ten years ago today, on Wednesday 10th April 2013, I was with cleaners and other outsourced workers at the University of London for a noisy protest at Senate House calling for equal sick pay, holidays and pensions with equivalent workers employed directly by the University – the 3 causes in their continuing ‘3 Cosas Campaign.’

Companies that want to maintain a respectable facade use outsourcing as a way to get workers on the cheap, using contractors to employ them under conditions of service that no respectable employer would use.

Outsourced workers are generally only entitled to the minimum Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), with no payment for the first three days out of work, after which they get the state provision – in 2013 of £85.85 per week in London.

Those who are on the university payroll get considerable extra benefits on top of the SSP, depending on their length of service. A worker who has been in the job for more than five years is eligible for full pay for the first six months of absence, and then a further six months on half pay plus SSP (so long as this total does not exceed their normal pay.) The university can at its discretion increase the period of sick pay in exceptional cases.

*Natalie Bennett, then leader of the Green Party, supports the campaign*

Holiday entitlement for outsourced works is also usually the statutory minimum of 28 days paid holiday (including bank holidays) but some of the caterers are on ‘zero hour contracts’ which means they get no holiday pay at all. In 2012 when many halls of residence were in use for the Olympics many outsourced staff were prevented from taking any holidays over the summer period.

Those directly employed by the university get an extra 5 to 10 days paid leave, as well as up to six more ‘school closure days, The 3 Cosas campaign wants similar treatment for all workers as well as more flexibilityover when they can take holidays. Many of the outsourced workers have families in South America or Africa, and given the high travel costs in visiting them would like to be able to take longer than two week breaks.

Companies who employ the outsourced workers generally also have far poorer management staff (often also underpaid) who bully staff and often impose quite impossible workloads so that the job is done much less well than it should be. Staff turnover is also often high. We’ve clearly seen the results of this elsewhere in hospitals where outsourcing of cleaning has contributed greatly to the spread of hospital-acquired infections.

Putting services such as cleaning out to contract may immediately cut costs, but doesn’t necessarily mean real long-term savings for organisations. Often it leads to necessary work not getting done which leads to greater costs in the long term, and it always results in lower standards of service. Any savings that are made are at the cost of the low-paid workers; outsourcing should be a badge of shame for any respectable company – and should be made illegal, along with zero hours contracts.

On My London Diary I give a clear description of the protest lead by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), the union which now represents many of the outsourced workers at the university, so I’ll not go through the details again here. But although the IWGB has a majority in many if not most workplaces the University and the outsourced employers refuse to recognise them, and the campaign is also about union recognition.

You can also see many more pictures at ‘3 Cosas’ -Sick Pay, Holidays & Pensions.