SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANT WORKERS: DEMO AT AMEY HQ, OXFORD: MON 8TH DEC

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

(Those of you with long mem­o­ries may remem­ber Amey as the con­trac­tor for What­ley Quar­ry way back when in 1996.)

How were they dam­ag­ing the com­pa­ny image? By belong­ing to a Trade Union and telling oth­er staff at the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NPL) in Lon­don where they work what was hap­pen­ing to them. Since them they have had their appeal against dis­missal reject­ed.

Back­ground:

Julio (one of the sacked clean­ers) recent­ly described how Amey were con­tract­ed by the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry to do the clean­ing work. Orig­i­nal­ly there were 36 Latin Amer­i­can clean­ers. When Amey took over the con­tract at NPL the clean­ers were paid £7.10 per hour. The com­pa­ny were sur­prised at this rate of pay and so attempt­ed to get rid of those work­ers con­tract­ed at this rate of pay.

Their first act was to reduce the lev­els of staffing. When the work­ers resist­ed the com­pa­ny respond­ed using intim­i­da­tion. On one occa­sion the work­ers were invit­ed to a health and safe­ty train­ing ses­sion. Once in the room 60 police and immi­gra­tion offi­cers entered. Some of the work­ers did not have the papers need­ed to work and have since been deport­ed.

But this did not deter the oth­er work­ers who knew their rights and con­tin­ued to show a tremen­dous spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty and courage.

No Bor­ders Groups from Bristol,Oxford,London & South Wales are attend­ing. It would be great see oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als there.

Trans­port is avail­able from Bris­tol. E‑mail: bristolnoborders@riseup.net

About The Cam­paign Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols:

Immi­gra­tion con­trols are a weapon against the whole work force. They divide us and are a tool of dis­ci­pline the work­force. If there are work­ers with less right or no rights, this under­mines the posi­tion of work­ers as a whole. The answer must be to oppose immi­gra­tion con­trols. EQUAL RIGHTS ARE IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL WORKERS!

http://caic.org.uk/

About The No Bor­ders Net­work:

No Bor­ders is a net­work of groups strug­gling for the free­dom of move­ment for all and an end to all migra­tion con­trols. We call for a rad­i­cal move­ment against the sys­tem of con­trol, divid­ing us into cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens.

/www.noborders.org.uk

Amey
The Sher­ard Build­ing
Oxford Sci­ence Park
Edmund Hal­ley Road
Oxford
OX4 4DQ

“I got a let­ter from the gov­ern­ment the oth­er day, I opened and read it, it said they were suck­ers” Chuck D