Cleaners of the world... unite!

Times are changing and governments and some trade unions are crawling along to catch up. Sub-contracted work deprives workers in service industries of their most basic rights to security and often to physical and mental safety. New unions and workers' cooperatives are away forward, neglected since the 1970s.

Zero-hours contracts and the so-called gig-economy are a major source of exploitation among service workers. Governments have been sluggish to respond to a problem that has existed for more than 10 years, and 'official' trade unions have often proved unwilling to act. Solidarity is the key to resisting exploitation and this situation has led to the formation of two new unions in recent years.

The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) was formed in 2012 by Latin American workers and has grown to thousands of members in the most exploitative industries, including couriers, cleaners, and care workers. United Voices of the World (UVW) has 5000 members also among migrant workers. Both unions have been active in support of cleaners at British universities, where sub-contracted labour is very common and the workers themselves are not included in negotiations.

A less common means of struggle nowadays is for the workers to form a cooperative and negotiate directly with the property owners, and Coline Grando's film "Theliberated broom" (Le Balai Libere) tells the story of a cleaners' coop with this name that was formed to overcome sub-contracted labour exploitation at the University of Louvain in Belgium in the 1970s. She meets the current cleaners at this enormous site who compare this coop with their current situation. The university was built in the1960s on a site which became Louvain-le-Neuve when the existing university stopped accepting French-speaking students. It doesn't have to be like this, and in the US unions are gaining strength.

I spoke to Coline for The Prisma, after her film was shown at Doclisboa in October 2023.

The full text with links and images can be read on the Prisma Multicultural Newspaper site, here: https://theprisma.co.uk/2023/11/27/cleaners-of-the-world-unite/