OPEN PLANNING MEETING for HANDS OFF MY WORKMATES CONFERENCE Wed 9th Sept 2009

Dear friends

SOAS UNISON, SOAS UCU and SOAS Students' Union would like to invite you to take part in an open planning meeting to discuss our campaign to bring back our cleaners in-house, and how to build the teach-in on migrant workers that we are organising for Saturday 17 October 2009 following the brutal UKBA raid on our cleaning staff in June.

Details of the meeting—at which we want to plan how to build the conference—are below.

Please feel free to forward this invitation.

Read the rest of the plans at the Free SOAS Cleaners blog. Provisional agenda included. Plus photos, videos and reports from occupation.

Thank you for all your support. let's try to make this a broad, proactive campaign. If this can happen at SOAS it can happen anywhere.We need to pre-empt moves by the government and management to let them
know we are watching and will fight back

Speak soon.

In solidarity

Demonstration at SOAS in support of SOAs 9. URGENT action needed

Campaign email: freesoascleaners@gmail.com

Press release for SOAS cleaners

At 6.30am on Friday the 12th June, ISS (the company who contracts SOAS’ cleaning staff) called a meeting for all SOAS cleaners. Within minutes the meeting was raided by approximately 40 immigration police, who detained all cleaners and arrested 9 people accused of working without proper documentation. These 9 people are now on fast-track to be deported from the UK.

Graham Dyer, Lecturer in Economics of Developing Countries and SOAS UCU Chair said: “It is no co-incidence that there is an immigration raid at a time when the UCU, Unison and the NUS are fighting against the victimisation of a migrant worker who has been at the heart of a fight that has improved the pay and conditions of workers here at SOAS. It is also not coincidental that ISS had only just signed a union recognition agreement with UNISON last week. Our fight has united lecturers, staff and students and has rocked SOAS management. Those managers are now lashing out. It is a disgrace that SOAS management saw fit to use a seat of learning to intimidate migrant workers. This is their underhand revenge and we will do all we can to stop migrant workers paying the price.”

SOAS Students’ Union and NUS conference have passed policy supporting the Living Wage campaign and the amnesty of migrant workers, and urge you to show solidarity with UNISON and SOAS SU in:

Protest against the deportation of migrant workers and their families.

• Bring the all workers in house, to receive equal treatment to SOAS staff, and force the university to take full responsibility for them.
  
• Formally disassociate from agencies such as ISS, and condemn such practice as witnessed at SOAS.
  
• Support the ‘Stranger into Citizens Campaign’ which calls for an amnesty for all migrant workers.
  

We urge student unions around the country to contact their UNISON branches in preparation for similar raids of outsourced staff, and campaign to provide them with in-house employment rights. Last week there was a threat of a raid at UCL, as witnessed at SOAS today, which suggests it could happen anywhere, and necessitates that as a National body we show solidarity with all of our workers.

Demonstrate at 4.30 today outside SOAS. Please come down, show your solidarity and prepare further action.
Contact suwelfare@soas.ac.uk or women@soas.ac.uk for more information.



Marya Ahmed SOAS SU Welfare and Education
Eleanor James SOAS Women’s Officer and NUS Women’s Committee

Ken Loach, director of the film Looking For Eric, message of support for SOAS cleaners

Ken Loach, director of the film Looking For Eric, stated:

"This raid is the action of a bully. Migrant workers are amongst the most vulnerable - poorly paid and far from home. Recent action by Unison to secure better wages and conditions at SOAS was good news. Now we wonder if the SOAS cleaners are being targeted because they dared to organise as trade unionists. We should all stand with them in solidarity in the face of this victimisation."

Please add more messages of support to the bottom of this post. Or email me.

I will collect them and pass them on.

Campaign phone numbers: 07971 302 349

(Live blogging NOW) SOAS raided this morning by Immigration Police. Urgent help needed

This post will be updated when i get more info...

UPDATE 15.44 

1 cleaner has been released.

3 are being held in old st police st

4 in Borough police station

One cleaner has agreed to be deported. She will fly out 4pm on Monday from Heathrow.

Those being held in Old St police station are scheduled to be deported on Monday.

Will be moved to Dover on monday

UPDATE: Basically, the cleaners were called into an emergency staff meeting at 6.30am this morning. They were then detained in the room (G2) until 40 robocop immigration officers surrounded them. They had been hiding in the room behind staging. This whole thing has been planned meticulously.

We can not get hold of any of the cleaners. This means thhey have had their mobile phones taken off them which is illegal. We still do not know where they are being detained.

Liveblogging from emergency Unison mtg

13.10. One of the cleaners 6 months pregnaant

Cleaners being held in detention centre near Gatwick (although i heard this from one person outside the mtg)

Being put on fast track for deportation

Governing Body being held at the moment in rm 116. We have people in there who will bring this up in the strongest possible manner.

We should protest at detention centre

It's outrageous that it is only the cleaners who have to prove where they come from

13.17 We should reiterate our call for bringing the outsourced services in house. ISS are complicit in this

Students ffrom the Detainee Support Society are fully on board

Lots of student support

Student Union will send out email and statement to all students

13.21 we should do a collection and make sure the families of the cleaners are also supported

ISS is well known for treating staff like this and employ large number of migrant workers

ISS actually said that they knew and allowed immigration in. why did they not just let the staff know in advance?

Immigration dressed like Robocop

SOAS management knew about raid in advance

13.36 what about the schools responsibility of duty of care to its staff

protest outside school at 4.30 TODAY

It's not coincidental that this has happened today given that we had a lobby of governing body planned for this morning over Stalin's cas but we were disrupted due to having to deal with this

13.51 mount pleasant post office also raided today

possibly UCL too

===============

This morning at 8, SOAS University was raided by Immigration police who rounded up 9 of our cleaners and are threatening to deport them tonight.

We have fought hard with the cleaners to get them union representation and a decent wage (which we have now got). many of them have been working here for years, and have their whole lives here in london..

Apparently this has happened at UCL too, and i believe on the tube where active cleaners were pulled up in front of management and subsequently fired because their working documents were not up to scratch

Staff at SOAS said it was a scene from Nazi Germany with all the cleaners lined up against a wall then shuffled into a room where they were locked up whilst having to fill out loads of forms. They were released individually only if they completed the forms correctly.

They have no access to lawyers or interpreters so I don't know if they all know exactly how to fill out the forms or whether they know exactly what is going on.

please offer your support by emailing MPs, MEPs, SOAS Management, anyone you can think of...and get in contact if you know any immigration lawyers. The Unison ones can only represent those already in the union.

thanks

this is the pathetic email we got from management assuring us that cleaning standards will be kept up! They should not be cooperating with the government on this. 

Dear colleagues

Officials from the Border Control Agency visited SOAS this morning

with a warrant to enter the premises and to carry out checks on

employees of our cleaning contractor ISS who were suspected of working

illegally.

We understand this must have been distressing for those involved, and

indeed our own colleagues. However we believe the checks were carried

out quickly and in a sympathetic manner.

We have been informed that nine people have been detained for further

questioning and ISS is liaising directly with the Border Control

Agency at this stage.

SOAS is legally obliged to co-operate fully with the authorities

regarding such matters and we would like to thank staff for their

cooperation and understanding at this time. We have received

assurances from ISS that the standard of cleaning in School buildings

will be maintained.

Alan Smith

Interim Secretary and Registrar

Minister gets cake in his face

The immigration minister Phil Woolas was first asked for his passport, then given an 'eco-nationalist award' and finally had a pie thrown in his face by a group from Manchester No Borders. This came in response to his plans of more stringent population controls as announced in the national press. We also denounced his attempts to scapegoat immigrants for the ongoing economic and ecological crises.

Read more from No Borders here.

UK Border Agency given Police powers

There is an article in the free paper 'Metro' today, in the series entitled [ironically so, (see below)] 'Real People', in which a 28 year old Arrest Team Leader from the UK Border Agency describes her work..

Vikki Lacey says, "If I felt sorry for everyone I wouldn't get out of bed. I just have to treat them as cases rather than people".... "The raids are fun. I'm not tied to my desk and every day is different".

Describing how things have changed for the better since the time when, "We were very restricted in what we could do as we had to rely on the police", she tells Metro readers how, "Now we can be more proactive and go out with our own teams".... "I've been trained to use a baton and handcuffs" .... "Sometimes, however, you can get violence".

She explains how the emphasis now is on workplace raids but they still raid people's houses, an action which "We tend to do very early in the morning".

She does not reveal whether she is a member of either the PCS union or the Immigration Officers house 'union'. Of course, some of the people doing this work are indeed PCS members.