Very Precarious

This is a report of the Precarious Workers Workshop held at the Right To Work Emergency Conference on 22nd May 2010:

The session was attended by around 50 delegates and was led off by a Glasgow supermarket worker and Tiago Gillot, a founding member of Portugal’s Precarious Workers movement.

 The supermarket worker said that he and a few of his workmates joined USDAW and set about organising their colleagues to improve the awful pay and conditions suffered by shop workers.

I'm All Lost In The Supermarket.

For instance, a TUC survey found that on average, shop workers put in at least 8 weeks unpaid overtime every year.

As well as poor pay, casual, lots of part-time workers, bullying managers were a problem as well.

They produced a newsletter – Shop Worker and the first issue led on sexism. Most of the check-out staff and shelf stackers are women and sexism means that their pay and conditions are worse than men’s, that they have to take part-time positions in order to take care of their children. They also have to put up with constant casual sexist remarks from customers, but mainly male managers.

Tiago Gillot from the Precarious Workers Organisation in Portugal told how their movement began in 2007, meeting up to rally under their banner on MayDay. He said that social blackmail by bosses made it  difficult for casual workers to break into the union movement.

The movement was formed to give confidence through unity to these workers.

In the discussion, an RMT activist talked about how Jarvis workers had been forced onto agency contracts. He also talked about the solidarity shown by Eurostar engineers with migrant cleaners who fought for the London Living Wage.

Can the Mitie (cleaning contractors) fall?

Another speaker talked about the fight by migrant cleaners around London’s universities and said that it was important for Right To Work to engage with migrant workers’ community organizations.

A London call-centre worker informed the workshop that 1000 call-centre workers had been sacked by Telegen in Brighton last week and he was looking to help organise a response.

A part-time agency worker said that she was sick of how union branch officials treated part-time and casual workers as second-class citizens.

A Camden trade unionist argued that casual workers needed to join the union and fight within the union to ensure that all workers are supported and defended.

Stress in the Call-Centre

Another trade unionist argued that organising temporary and casual workers was the job of all trade unionists. Every workplace had cleaners, security guards, catering staff that were agency or casual.

The workshop agreed the following proposals;

1. Link up the various precarious workers campaigns and seek to organise a conference by the end of 2010.
2. Organise local seminars on how to organise casual workers.
3. Produce a pamphlet on how to organise a union
4. Make links with Trades Councils and migrant workers communities.
5. Protest at Parliament at reading of the budget