Soon after University of London management hired private security to evict student protesters from Senate House’s Chancellor’s Hall – which they were occupying in solidarity with outsourced workers – the Guardian reveals that the institution spent over £1.3 million on extra security measures between March and November last year.

IWGB University of London Branch Secretary Danny Millum comments: “We unequivocally condemn these violent acts against peaceful protesters by private security under the orders of university management. It is completely unacceptable that management would rather waste millions of pounds repressing peaceful protest than addressing the legitimate concerns of students, workers and the academic community. It is past due for the university to sit and negotiate with its outsourced workers and end this dispute that has dragged on for almost two years”.

See below for letter from our branch secretary re serious issues affecting Cordant security staff at the University of London:

Dear Ghaz,

I am writing as promised in yesterday’s ICE Forum to flag up a number of extremely serious issues affecting Cordant bench officers following the TUPE transfer of front of house staff.

Since the transfer, Cordant have drastically cut down on the hours of many of their bench team, and have transferred responsibility for allocating shifts to a national call centre and away from the University of London site. In addition, staff are in many cases being advised of shifts on a daily basis, rather than rotas being provided a week ahead.

This of course amounts to breach of contract, as Cordant have either given staff less than their contracted hours OR less than than the hours which they had been customarily working for months or even years.

Furthermore, it is causing enormous amounts of misery and distress – long-standing staff with many dependents have suddenly had their incomes slashed, and have the added uncertainty of not even knowing from week to week what shifts they will be working and when.

Ridiculously there are plenty of shifts to go round – but for some reason Cordant are assigning them to new temporary staff who are completely untrained on site. 

I am also attaching a contract received by one of these officers in September 2018 which (in contravention of the University’s declared policy of ending zero-hours contracts) is for just 336 hours a year – a zero hours contract in all but name. In addition I am attaching a recent message from a Cordant security manager to a guard stating that ‘we are obliged to allocate Bench officers a total of 336 hours annually’. 

This practice by Cordant was meant to have been banned by the University – were you aware that it is still continuing?

These problems have undoubtedly been triggered by splitting the security contract in two, which has meant that staff who previously covered reception duties are no longer allowed to do so. But it has been exacerbated by Cordant’s introduction of temporary staff and removal of rota responsibility from this site.

We have already raised half-a-dozen individual grievances over this matter, and will continue to raise more. However, in order to resolve the situation collective action is needed – namely that the University recognise that Cordant is unfit and unwilling to run the security contract for a moment longer, and bring these officers in-house immediately, with a guarantee that their shifts and hours be respected.

Best wishes
Danny

The IWGB’s boycott of Senate House, the University of London’s (UoL) central administrative headquarters in Bloomsbury, has been given a boost.

Last week (25–29 May), the University and College Union (UCU) Congress overwhelmingly passed a boycott motion. This means that it is now official UCU policy to NOT attend nor organise any events in UoL’s central administrative buildings until all its outsourced workers have been brought in-house.

The UCU’s support has empowered the mainly BAME cleaners to release a short video asking higher education staff and academics to help their case by supporting the boycott – please check it out here. They have been fighting for some two years for equality of employment.

This level of national solidarity is unprecedented. At the Congress speaker after speaker pledged their support for our workers and Jo Grady, UCU’s new general secretary, also confirmed her commitment to the campaign.

The boycott motion was brought to the UCU Congress because, while the in-house campaign has forced the university to commit to the principle of in-housing, there are still many outstanding issues:

• only 10% of workers have been brought in-house
• current plans are so vague that the 90% of workers who are not in-house have only been promised ‘reviews’, some of which will not take place until 2021
• there are no guarantees that any of these 90%, which includes all the cleaners, catering staff and the majority of security staff will ever be brought in
• these workers are still being massively discriminated against in terms of sick pay, holidays, pensions and more

In addition, as outlined below, UoL has launched a crackdown on the workers and their union, the IWGB.

University of London crackdown

The university and the outsourced companies have not only refused all offers of talks with the workers and their union – the IWGB – its management has responded by attacking trade union rights. Moreover, it has increased discrimination against the outsourced workers.

First the IWGB’s branch secretary was threatened with disciplinary action for accepting an invitation to attend a seminar to talk about the boycott.

Second, cleaning company Cordant Services introduced a draconian new sickness phone-in policy solely for the cleaners. Rather than reporting to managers or supervisors they must now call a centralised number to report all absences. Failure to do so will result in instant disciplinary action. 

There was just one catch. Many of the cleaners speak little or no English while no-one in the call centre speaks anything but. Listen here as an Ecuadorian cleaner tries to call in sick.

Third, Cordant Security has refused to allow trade union representation for migrant security staff at the university. The company has gone so far as to hire EXTRA security to physically block the IWGB representative from attending a meeting to which he was invited by the worker.

This is all happening at OUR university and is in response to pleas by the lowest-paid and most vulnerable workers in the building to be treated equally.

Dr Dion Georgiou, a senior lecturer at the University of Chichester, calls on academics to “stand in solidarity with cleaners and security staff, and fight precarious employment.”

Writing in the Guardian, Dr Georgiou who has been organising seminars and events at Senate House for more than a decade, said outsourcing has to end and he is proud to back the University of London boycott.

In his article he also points out that universities routinely invest huge amounts in real estate while neglecting to invest in their staff. And commenting on the difficulties the outsourced workers at the University of London have been facing since their campaign began in 2017, he said “… they face an intransigent university management with skewed priorities, whose response has all too frequently blended short-termism with heavy-handedness.

“Refusing to negotiate directly with the workers’ chosen union representatives, it has instead expended heavily on policing the workers’ industrial action and student protests taken in support of them, spending over £400,000 on additional security over a two-month period last year alone.”

Remembering the IWGB members who supported academics who themselves had to take industrial action against their employers, Dr Georgiou said “Last year, while I was stood on the picket line outside King’s College London (where I myself was then precariously employed) during our strike over pensions, IWGB members supported our action, with some refusing to cross UCU picket lines. Now we must stand with them. We are all in this fight together.”

Read the full article here.