By New Worker correspondent
This week we once again turn the spotlight on the activities of three of Britain’s smallest and newest unions which are not affiliated to the Trades Union Congress. The three unions whose recent activities are discussed were generally founded to organise in sectors which larger and established unions have not been successful in organising for one reason or another.
IWUGB
First we turn our attention to the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) which was founded in 2012 and has a membership of 4,613.
It recently elected a new general secretary, Ecuador born Henry Chango Lopez when he worked as a porter and cleaner at the University of London. Here he helped unionise the majority of the outsourced workers there. After a ten year campaign the union finally secured the end of outsourcing at the sprawling federal university. His election follows less than a week after this major victory for the union. Following his election he said “I have the experience of being in the union since the beginning, when we had about 300 members and no office. I used to work as a cleaner and porter at the University of London. Before I joined a union I didn’t know anything about unions and I was an exploited worker so I am very proud of what we have achieved”.
The founding General Secretary, Jason Moyer-Lee, commented that “We should all be proud that our union believes that a migrant worker, who came to this country barely speaking English and got involved in unions as an outsourced cleaner earning less than the living wage, is the best person to be our leader. I have every confidence that Henry will do great things in this next phase of the IWGB’s history and I look forward to supporting him in those efforts.
The IWGB specialises in representing sections of the workforce which have traditionally been non-unionised and under-represented. It was founded out of dissatisfaction at Unite and Unison’s failures to organise. This correspondent has heard grumbles that an organising initiative involving the Unite ended the moment the photographer departed from the launch event.
IWGB also represents bicycle couriers, cycle instructors, Uber drivers, and foster care workers, almost entirely in London. In 2018 it established a Game Workers Unite group which now appears to have be inactive for the past year. A union for precarious workers can have a precarious existence itself.
While it has organised strikes it has been particularly active in the courts. Its legal department has notable successes in establishing that private hire drivers and couriers are rightfully employees, thus entitling them to a range of employment rights previously denied to them by employers.
Last week it won an important High Court judicial review against the Government which called for health and safety protections for ‘gig economy’ and precarious workers. This success means that the government failed to properly implement EU health and safety directives and must now extend health and safety protections to ‘gig economy’ and precarious workers.
It points out that the pandemic has made workers’ rights into a public health issue, arguing that the Government’s failure to extend health and safety protections has left many workers in the ‘gig economy’ exposed to serious risks. It claims that one in ten workers engage in ‘gig economy’ work, which accounts for at least 4.7 million people working in the UK with little to no health and safety protections.
Speaking of the case Henry Chango Lopez said “We are delighted with this win for workers’ rights. In the midst of the pandemic, health and safety at work has never been more important. It is crucial that businesses know they must protect the health and safety of their workers and that the Government brings the criminal prosecutions necessary to enforce this law.”
Alex Marshall, the union’s president added that: “Key workers have been calling for greater protection throughout the pandemic and this has largely fallen on the deaf ears of their employers. The IWGB contacted numerous companies during the first wave and they either did very little or nothing at all as they tried to escape any accountability for their workforce. This ruling is long overdue and the IWGB expects that in the light of this clear ruling, the UK Government will now take urgent legislative measures to ensure workers’ safety.”
UVW
The United Voices of Workers (UVW), is a similar, but smaller union founded in London in 2014. It began by winning victories for porters at posh auction house Sotheby’s and for security workers at the slightly more downmarket Harrod’s. It also represents people at the lower end of the legal profession such as trainees, pupil barristers, assistants, administrative staff, paralegals and even a few barristers.
In April its United Strippers branch won a legal victory at an Employment Tribunal which a rejected the owner’s arguments that the ladies were self-employed and therefore not entitled to rights such as sick pay or holiday pay. No doubt that makes the venue an acceptable place for left-wing groups to hold their meetings.
It also focusses on securing the London Living Wage, contractual sick pay and other rights and like IWGB has won battles on behalf of outsourced cleaners at the London School of Economics which set the tone for other similar campaigns. It also runs English language classes for its members and even took on the might to the British Monarchy by launching a case on behalf of a mostly black African who claim they are treated differently to the mainly white admin staff who work directly for the Royal Parks.
At present the union is fighting the case of a member who was sacked from his present job for leading a strike at a former employer. Security guard Cetin Avsar was suspended by security, aviation and construction company Wilson James from work at the Francis Crick Institute in London’s Kings Cross, London. Wilson James said that his role in the successful strike at a London college which saw outsourced workers brought in-house “means there is a conflict of interest between your opinion and work with the union which lead to your protesting, and your employment with Wilson James”.
The evidence presented includes a dossier of photos and videos of Avsar on strike and expressing his views in the press about outsourcing. UVW said this is “one of the most blatant and egregious violations of a worker’s human rights” they have ever seen.
In response Avsar said: “I am totally shocked by the way Wilson James is treating me. They are totally victimising me for being a member of UVW union and for having taken lawful strike action against my previous employer Bidvest Noonan at St George’s of London. This has caused me a lot of distress. I have done nothing wrong. They are breaching my human rights and I will not stand for it”.
Petros Elia, UVW added that “The hypocrisy of Wilson James is staggering. They have slapped a Black Lives Matter poster on the front of their website and waxed lyrical about how their industry “needs to do more for those from BAME backgrounds”, but in the same breath are unlawfully punishing a BAME key worker for having taken lawful industrial action against a great institutional racism at his former workplace”.
In another case the union’s Legal Sector Workers United (LSWU) branch won a court action against a top divorce law firm Vardags (i.e. their lawyers are very expensive) which prevented the firm from gagging a former employee accused of leaking a memo in which female staff were reminded that they could dress ‘discreetly sexy’, but ‘never tarty’. She was sacked for alleged poor performance as soon as the leak was discovered. Nursing its bruises Vardags accused UVW of seeking a high profile scalp, which means they must be doing something right. Petros Elia, responded by saying: “Vardags has chosen to impugn our legitimate trade union activities in defending and promoting the interests of our members. They and other bosses in and beyond the legal sector should be in no doubt that we will continue to do so.”
IWW
The third on the new unions is the Industrial Workers of the World, which was founded as a trade union in 2012, reviving in name at least the once mighty north American syndicalist union, known as the Wobblies.
It has recently been active in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) sector which rakes in £1.4 billion a year in Britain. The companies involved often have grand names which disguise the fact that their premises are couple of rooms above a chip shop. They often have employment practices to match. Other companies sell online course to learners abroad, particularly China.
On Monday IWW announced it was taking the Canterbury based “Overseas Teacher” company to an employment tribunal on behalf of nine teachers who are hired on as self-employed. They allege they are not being paid the national minimum wage; statutory sick pay; and failure to provide holiday pay and suffer unfair deductions of wages. IWW caseworker Ryan McCready said: “We feel these teachers were essentially employees in everything but name. Just looking through their contracts, we were alarmed by the amount of control which the company exerted over these individuals. When we spoke to the teachers, we were shocked by how much more this translated in practice.”
The lack of employee status “means is that schools and other organisations can hire staff at below the minimum wage, ignore UK employee and worker legislation, and subject them to conditions that are incredibly harsh and regressive” she added before concluding “It’s indicative of the declining state of the TEFL industry standards and this case really is the teachers standing up for their rights.”
The IWW hopes more present and former teachers at the Overseas Teachers to join the claim. Efforts were made to resolve matters internally and through the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to no avail.
One ex-teacher said “It was really demoralising to see almost $100 deducted from my pay for 2 days of illness, that’s significantly more than I earn in that amount of time, so it seems very unfair. Eventually that led me to leaving the company as I don’t want to have to sacrifice my health for money.”
Another teacher said “I was never in the job with the aspiration to make huge amounts of cash, only enough to survive. I accepted the bad working conditions and lack of communication because I believed the job provided me with the security to pay my bills. After our sudden and undiscussed change in contract, I could no longer afford most of my living costs. I now hold several jobs and continue to rely on Universal Credit due the unreliability and unethical practices of the Overseas Teacher.”
More generally the IWW has been involved in opposing redundancies in Covid-19 related redundancies. English UK, the TEFL trade organisation were disappointed in the lack there was no specific government support offered to the language teaching industry which lead to redundancies in language schools in recent months.
Now that furlough has been extended to March 2021 language schools seem reluctant to rehire even when legally possible. IWW say that keeping workers in a job would maintain “the UK’s image as an advanced economy in the soft power battles of inter-imperialist rivalries will hopefully be, to a certain extent, protected”.
IWW claims that the TEFL industry has a history of a serious lack of union organisation, which it is now putting right in opposing zero hour contracts and bogus self-employment. It has claimed a number of recent victories against other companies in getting staff onto furlough at the start the pandemic. These include the high-profile campaigns against EF and Kaplan, and organisational support for reps at EC English who managed to reduce redundancies with an unpaid leave agreement. Those subject to that agreement are now back on furlough as they remained on the pay role.
Now that the furlough scheme has been extended, those same workers are back on furlough.
