About seventy people demonstrated at SOAS on the 6th June, in the continuing battle for better conditions for cleaners in the London universities.
The cleaners at some universities have won the London Living Wage, but they have not given up and are demanding equal conditions of employment for all staff - fair sick pay, holiday pay and pension contributions. Some universities, like UCL, are refusing to make any increase in cleaners’ wages. Others, like at Senate House, have conceded the LLW but are now trying to impose speedup on the cleaners with an increase in workload.
There were passionate speeches from cleaners, students, teachers and from workers from other colleges, and then the demonstration marched to Senate House and went inside to the entrance hall for a noisy demo in solidarity with the Senate House cleaners and to protest the managements’ attempts to impose speedup there. With shouts of “el pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido” ringing through the corridors, it is clear that the Bloomsbury cleaners are still going strong.