A massive victory for Eurostar cleaners - and what we must do now

From LabourStart mailing list. 

I love getting an email like this on a Monday morning.

"I am writing to thank you, your organisation and supporters for the solidarity and support displayed in the recent Carlisle Cleaners dispute in London," writes Mick Lynch, a member of the Executive Committee of RMT, a British union. 

"I am glad to report that following two 24-hour strikes, the email/web campaign coordinated by Labourstart, and the media and political pressure we were able to exert, a settlement has been agreed."

It  gets even better.

• The cleaners -- who clean Eurostar trains -- won a nearly 6% pay increase effective next year and another increase totalling nearly 10% over 13 months.
• The company has agreed that the London Living Wage is the benchmark for future pay agreements.
• An agreement has been reached on bullying and harassment of staff, to mitigate the redundancy program, and to discuss pensions and sick pay in the next round.

The workers ratified the agreement by a huge margin.

This is what happens when workers stand their ground -- and get support from their union and from trade unionists like yourselves around the world. 

Thousands of you sent messages to Eurostar.   Your voices were heard.

As another RMT official put it to me today, "this is a massive victory for cleaners."

Online campaigning works -- let no one doubt this.

So here's my question to all of you: 

There are almost 53,000 of you on this list.  But only 6,936 of you have sent off messages in support of workers at Vale Inco in Canada who've been on strike since July. 

There are 46,000 of you who are reading this message who've not yet sent a message to this company.

I'm appealing to every one of you -- please take a few seconds and send off a message right now.

If you're one of the 6,936 who've already done this, thanks -- but let's do more. 

Forward this message to other members of your union, to workmates, to friends and colleagues and family members. 

We want 10,000 messages in the inbox of Vale's CEO, Roger Agnelli, before Christmas.

We've helped win a huge victory for cleaners on Eurostar trains.  Let's now do the same for our brothers and sisters walking the picket lines at Vale Inco.

And one more thing. 

Please help LabourStart with a generous end-of-year donation. 

It costs money to do these campaigns and we rely on your support -- and your union's.

Thanks very much to all of you.

Eric Lee



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