PRESS RELEASE: City of London Corporation Cleaners say: Occupy Guildhall!
The Guildhall
London
EC2V 7HH
Cleaners staging sit in at Corporation of
London’s Guildhall over abuse of women!
Cleaners are staging a
sit in at the Corporation of London’s Guildhall in protest at the inadequate
response of their employer, the contractor Sodexo over the abusive treatment of
women employees.
The cleaners who are organised by the independent
workers union, the Industrial Workers of the World say their action comes after
growing frustration with Sodexo (and their predecessor Ocean)
following
persistent complaints regarding the conduct of certain members of
the management team at Guildhall. Repeatedly complaints have been raised
with respect to varying degrees of the mistreatment especially of women,
including extreme acts such as bullying, confinement of individuals,
intimidation and assault.
The cleaners say the last straw was an incident
involving a manager and one of the union representatives on Monday 21
November. The rep Isabel Martin was followed to a room in the basement of
Guildhall, where she was blocked from leaving with the door closed, then it is
alleged a male supervisor subjected her to an outburst of aggression and
intimidating behaviour, the terrified women felt she was under threat of
serious physical violence.
The IWW London Regional Secretary Chris Ford
states that: ‘the union has raised concerns and
complaints of the treatment of employees on enough previous occasions with the
employers to warrant sufficient preventative measures to safeguard the safety
employees and to ensure no further mistreatment may occur. In the summer a mass
meeting of cleaners had called for the removal of those managers responsible for
ill-treatment of workers.’
The last incident the IWW insists could have been avoided if the
concerns of workers were respected and acted upon beforehand. One cleaner
stated: ‘These big companies need to put the safety of the workers before the
reputation of the City of London
Corporation’.
The union feels Sodexo
have dragged their feet over this incident – they raised a complaint in letters
of 22/11/2011 and 29/11/2011 but it took twenty days before the women worker was
formally interviewed. Her complaint of such a serious matter has been
treated as a mere grievance.
For the last two days a number of workers
have refused to undertake their cleaning duties and are staging a sit in at the
reception of the Guildhall. They are demanding robust action that can
protect women workers from such ill-treatment occurring again.