Hi everyone,
Since winning our campaign at the Daily Mail for the London Living Wage thanks to all your amazing support, our trade union United Voices of the World has continued to help hundreds and thousands of workers just like us win the living wage, and dignity and respect at work.
They are currently organising 7 strikes across London at 3 universities (Greenwich Uni cafe workers, St George's and University of East London security guards), 1 corporate office (ITV and Channel 4 HQ's cleaners), 1 government department (Ministry of Justice's cleaners who have been striking for 1 year), 7 Royal Parks (cleaners again - petition here) and 1 hospital (St Mary's). And they've just won two other strikes at the global fashion brand Chanel where they forced them to pay all cleaners the living wage, and at another multinational too call Unruly.
The biggest of UVW's current 7 strikes is at St Mary's hospital in Paddington, London, which is part of Imperial NHS Trust.
Starting on 28th October up to 200 cleaners, caterers and porters - all migrant workers and outsourced to the French multinational Sodexo, will take the first of 15 days of strike action. They are demanding the living wage, dignity and equality with NHS staff.
They are currently paid poverty wages of £8.21 per hour and less, they are overworked, and denied proper sick pay. Plus many are only given one uniform for the week, and they are forced to change in mixed sex, rat infested rooms in the basement of the hospital, and are excluded from NHS staff canteens.
To make matters worse Sodexo's so-called Equalities Officer turns out to be racist and recently told a group of Eastern European cleaners that “all Eastern Europeans need to be sent back home because they are trouble makers”. The Head of Facilities at St Mary's Hospital, Andrew Murray, knows about this racist abuse and has chosen so far to do nothing about it.
The workers at St Mary's have their own Change.org petition which you can sign here to support them. Please do.
They are also asking for anyone who can afford it to support their strike fund. They will need all the help they can get in filling it because Sodexo is planning on bussing in workers from across the UK and paying them double and triple pay plus putting them up in hotels in order to try and break the strike. St Mary's and the CEO of Imperial Trust, Tim Orchard, are complicit in this scandal.
Any amount you can afford would be so appreciated and will make a big difference. You can donate here: https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/strikefund
Thank you everyone for your support.
Lots of love and respect.
Juliana