Please help spread the word about this initiative, and please email handsoffmyworkmate@yahoo.co.uk to let us know if you are coming on Saturday, or if your union branch or organisation can back the campaign.
In Solidarity,
Julia Rapkin
Birkbeck UNISON
Hands Off my Workmate!
Organising for Migrant Workers Rights.
SOAS Conference and Teach-in
Saturday, 17th October 2009, 10am-5:30pm
School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh St, Russell Sq WC1H 0XG
**Full programme for the day now available at http://handsoffmyworkmate.blogspot.com/2009/08/conference-programme_8633.html.**
Cleaners at SOAS who had joined UNISON and organised to win the London Living Wage suffered a brutal immigration raid, organised by the cleaning contractor ISS, in June this year. The raid highlighted both the central role of migrant workers in the global economy and the vulnerability of the undocumented workers who have been working to build union organization. This conference and teach-in will address the issues surrounding migrant labour, attacks on their citizenship and right to organise and the ways in which all workers are impacted by the extensions of the border in our workplace.
Workshops include:
* Bread and roses too: how migrant workers have always been central to unions
* Winning the living wage
* Busting the migration myths: challenging the racists
* Globalisation and profits: How do borders fit in
* Poverty, war, neo-liberalism, migrant labour in the global economy
* Stopping the raids: legal and union strategies to defend migrant workers
* The border in the workplace: restricting welfare and housing- who benefits
* Citizens and Strangers: The amnesty debate
* The feminisation of migrant labour
* Jobs for all? Migrant workers in the recession* We won't spy on students - education for all.
Plus Closed Legal Briefing for Migrant Workers 2:15pm
With lawyers from Immigration Advisory Service and other immigration firms.
Rally for Migrant Workers Rights – 4:00pm
Speakers include: Jeremy Corbyn MP I Jean Lambert MEP I Prof Gilbert Achcar I Migrant Rights Network I Clara Osagiede, RMT I Sandy Nicoll, SOAS UNISON I UNITE Justice for Cleaners Campaign I Prof Alex Callincos I RMT I Sasha Callaghan, UCU NEC I Rita Chada, RAMFEL I NUT I CWU I NUJ I Elane Heffernan, Hands off My Workmate I Prof Jane Hardy I Bloomsbury Living Wage Campaign I Habib Rahman, JCWI I Latin American Workers Association I Kate Boothby, National Coalitin of Anti-Deportation Campaigns I Dr Subir Sinha I Dr Paru Raman I Prof Phil Marfleet.
For more information, see http://handsoffmyworkmate.blogspot.com/, or send an email to: handsoffmyworkmate@yahoo.co.uk.
More details of the SOAS raid and campaign see: http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com/.
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