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26.07.2024 / News /

Pay, precarity and power in a union!

“This is not senseless fighting, when you fight for something you believe in, it will take you somewhere. We just need you to stand with us” Khadija Jalloh, cleaner for 24 years at Department for Education, DFE

UVW members, Khadija, Evelyn and Genevieve, represented United Voices of the World at the Black Lives Matter “Festival of Collective Liberation” on 13 July 2024.

The UVW strikers shared a panel discussion spoke alongside private hire driver, Helio, from sister union IWGB shared how they’re fighting back against structural inequalities at Great Ormond Street Hospital, GOSH and the Department for Education, DfE.

At DfE, UVW members have postponed their strikes after winning a backdated pay claim and starting negotiations for improved sick pay and annual leave. Khadija told the conference delegates  “This is not senseless fighting, when you fight for something you believe in, it will take you somewhere. We just need you to stand with us”

At GOSH, Genevieve and Evelyn spoke about their pride in being cleaners and how they organised and forced the hospital to ditch its cleaning private contractor and employ them as NHS workers.

Talking about the legal claim by some 80 cleaners over GOSH’s practice of outsourcing that had resulted in worse pay and terms and conditions than workers employed by the NHS, Genevieve told delegates “ If we win our legal claim of indirect race discrimination brought by the cleaners – we will make history!” 

BLM participants heard the message loud and clear: it is possible to unite against all odds and change our working conditions!

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