LABOUR: 25/06/2025

Adapted company logo for CAIWU’s campaign against University of East London’s outsourced cleaning company NVIRO. H.I.S.S. Collective in conjunction with Wealth of Negations and CAIWU workers (2022)
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25/06/2025

30,000 Spanish metal workers began barricading all exits from the city, stopping trains, marching and fighting riot cops in Cadiz, Andalucia 1 week ago. Today they enter 3rd day of strike/shutdown after refusing agreement reached by main union and the bosses, as many of them and smaller unions unhappy with contract terms setting 2 salary levels and so furthering precarity & inner class divison within their sector… as of June 26th, the strike will be 100% and permanent until satisfied with any agreement.

Coverage in Spanish:

News report Spanish National RTVE;

https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20250624/huelga-indefinida-metal-cadiz-segunda-jornada/16637781.shtml

Here the main union the UGT criticizes workers refusing draft agreement & continuing strikes & direct action with critique ‘The easiest thing to do is to destroy and oppose yourself to the whole system.’.

While the large union encourages workers to stop strike and assure ‘social peace’ the replies to their X post detailing their position reveal that Musk’s bots haven’t invaded more radical workers replies as of yet… calling them traitors to the working class…

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17/06/2025
The US deportation bureau, ICE has reversed a directive that gave pause to the pursuit and arrest of agricultural workers against the wishes of US Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins (Founder of the America First Policy Institute) with her own concerns about the impact on food prices. The reversal is the work of the Administration’s pit bull, Stephen Miller whose hatred of not-rich immigrants is all-consuming. Hopes rise for a seriously dirty, no-rules fight to the death between the two of them.
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07/06/2025

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06/06/2025
Deaths of shipworkers have increased dramatically in the last six years. They are usually the result of mechanical failure or damage on ageing ships. Shipowners have been reluctant to retire aging vessels when freight rates have been so high. In 2024 they were at record levels.

GOOD NEWS though that 22 crew members were rescued uninjured from a 600-foot car carrier that caught fire 300 miles off the coast of Alaska. It was en route from China to Mexico with 3000 vehicles, 800 of which were electric cars.
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03/06/2025
A lawsuit against The Florida-based GEO Group forcing immigrant detainees to work and be paid $1 a day is going to the US Supreme Court. Watch This Space.

The company “Owns 77.000 beds” in 98 prisons . This case refers to their Aurora, Colorado “facility”. Its owners claim the lawsuit is a backdoor strategy of Do-Gooders who don’t like the Trump-eters’ immigration blitzkrieg but they are themselves recidivists, having already been found guilty of such criminal exploitation in Washington state.

In military dictatorship Myanmar the Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM) has called for a minimum daily wage of 20,000 kyats for factory workers excluding overtime pay alongside other key demand. In a statement issued on 1 May, FGWM urged factory and workshop owners to adopt an 8-hour workday with fair pay, ensure access to proper healthcare in the workplace, and immediately abolish all forms of forced labour.

Under the dictatorship  many union leaders have been arrested and imprisoned for opposing its rule in non-violent protest.
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28/05/2025
From China to the USA; from Zimbabwe to the UK, students are being tied into cheap labour for corporate capital. The methods differ: financial pressure to avoid starvation, “working for fees” or, nicely-nicely, “earn while you learn”; or making graduation dependent on accepting such work. In the UK it is accompanied by the highest degree of flim-flam: here the talk is of “social engagement” at the very moment real social spaces for students are taken away.
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27/05/2025
Brazil’s Labour Ministry has finally got around to launching a civil court case against the Chinese automaker BYD and two contractors for slave labour and human “trafficking” . Workers are enticed into Brazil with specialized services visas whereby once in the country they are forced o work long hours 7 days a week and live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions under constant, militarized surveillance; their passports withheld as are their wages under “early contract termination” clauses.

IT is a situation analogous to the mass entrapment of Chinese “coolies” in  the 19^th century Americas and in modern times  the use and abuse of Bolivian workers in Argentina.
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16/05/2025
An email sent by a senior ICE (immigrant hunters) official in the USA, Tatem King to regional ICE officials called on them to pause raids and arrests in the agricultural and “hospitality” industries. These would seem to be industries and constituencies the Trump regime does not want to lose. The largely Korean-owned garment sweatshops of Los Angeles- the main location of the US garment indudtry – and its “Latino” workers are perhaps seen as dispensable.
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24/04/2025

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11/04/2025

To sell the fantasy that relatively high-wage jobs for men are going to be recreated in the USA (and sold by European fascists in Europe too) would require the smashing of worker organisation in the real world. At present Apple Macs and I-Phones are manufactured in China by a Taiwanese company  Foxconn. Working conditions are so bad that in the past, a spate of worker suicides resulted in the implementation of suicide prevention netting and a request for workers to sign ‘no suicide pledges’.  The families of those who killed themselves initially received compensation equivalent to 10 years’ wages as condolence payments although this was later rescinded when Foxconn argued that financial incentives might encourage further suicides. No such luck for those coerced student-worker interns who make up 30% of the workforce and are not protected by employment contracts or social insurance and have no rights under Chinese labour Laws. Now with psychologists and cultural sociologists backed by guards who beat student workers doing unpaid overtime or falling asleep on the job they still get the desired productivity results.

Apple are shifting some production to India to avoid Trump trouble where Foxconn have recently set up production facilities at Tamil Nadu and with those at Karnataka and Telangana soon to open. No rapid shift to the US just yet, not in terms of Iphone assembly at least, unless US labour laws and the Federal minimum wage can be challenged, tweaked, trumped in some way. With child labour already lurking deep in its supply chains and children as young as 7 working in Congolese mines, Florida’s new bill allowing 14 year olds to work overnight shifts on school days, closely followed by Kentucky allowing non-profits to hire 12-13 year olds offers a sense of where this might be heading
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22/03/2025
JBS S.A. the world’s biggest beef producer headquartered in Sao Paulo well known for its role in Brazilian deforestation, has come to increasingly rely on Haitian migrant workers in its slaughterhouse/ meatpacking plants like that at Greeley, Colorado. If the proposed assault on recent immigrants to the USA is carried out, the price of “cheap” beef in the country will rise significantly.

At the time when for a brief period the dangers of the COVID virus was recognised, “Meatpacking plants there and in Europe were epicentres of sickness and death. In the UK and Germany it threw up the dirty secret that slaughterhouses there were dependent on migrant labour, mostly workers from Eastern Europe.
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27/09/2024
Wealth of Negations (WoN) re/gained momentum in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and after an invite by the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU)* in early 2021 to support its campaign agains worker victimisation, dismissals and outsourcing in London. With a responsibility to draft up communications (e.g. press releases, leaflets, letters etc), WoN has sought to translate regular meetings with essential workers/cleaners into texts supporting workplace negotiations and protest action. The examples included here relate to ongoing CAIWU campaigns against the British Medical Association (BMA), Royal Opera House and the University of East London and their outsourced cleaning companies. The graphics in support of these campaigns were developed in conjunction with the H.I.S.S Collective** under direction from WoN and CAIWU workers. NOTE: A more comprehensive collection of associated material including: press releases, pamphlets, communications, visuals, audio etc. can be accessed on request.

CAIWU vs British Medical Association
In late 2020, against a backdrop of government lockdowns and claims of reduced occupancy at its headquarters in central London, the BMA reneged on its commitment to covering the employer’s contribution to workers’ furlough payments. As a direct consequence, on January 31, 2021, thirty cleaners were scheduled to be taken off furlough and dismissed by the British Medical Association’s outsourced company, City West Services. The initial campaign against these redundancies was met with a dismissive reply from the Director of Human Resources “I wish you well you well with your endeavours and encourage you to urge City West to make use of the furlough scheme to enable the continuation of some level of income for your members”. At this point, CAIWU invited WoN to carry out research, write a press release and come up with visuals linked to protest action outside the BMA, due to coincide with the proposed dismissals.

Adapted company logo for the CAIWU campaign against the British Medical Association and their outsourced company City West Services. The slogan from a BMA report at the time, ‘People First, Budgets Second’ has been inverted and the snake found in graphics associated with the medical profession (associated with the Greek god of healing Asclepius), recast as a pouncing cobra.
H.I.S.S. Collective in conjunction with Wealth of Negations and CAIWU workers (2021).

This shift in CAIWU tactics first gained traction on social media over the course of February 2021 highlighting the hypocrisy of an organisation with a publicly stated commitment to challenging outsourcing in the public sector, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the Covid pandemic on Black and Brown communities in Britain and its support for Black Lives Matter. Given the racialised composition of BMA’s outsourced workers now threatened with redundancy, it was pointed out that they were adding to the ‘Streets of Shame’ noted in their published report from 2019 and putting “Budgets first, people second”.

…. with a request that they temporarily suspend the campaign, remove social media posts and enter a process of negotiation. In consultation with its members and in good faith, CAIWU complied with this request on condition that the BMA review its outsourcing policy with a view to bringing its essential workers/cleaners and porters in-house. As a direct consequence, the BMA immediately reversed its decision on furlough payments, compelled CWS to reinstate workers issued with redundancy notices offering future negotiations on ‘matched pay and conditions’.

[[SECTION HERE ON NEGOTIATIONS]]


CAIWU vs University of East London
In early 2021 in response to an impending Employment Tribunal on the dismissal of a CAIWU union rep for “insubordination” at the University of East London (UEL), WoN composed a press release highlighting the victimisation of workers by UEL’s outsourced services company NVIRO. The Press Release was aimed to coincide with the online hearing, which was rescheduled at short notice and promptly concluded with a court confidentiality clause imposed on the affected worker.

Adapted company logo for the CAIWU campaign against the University of East London with the Phoenix grounded in its own shit. H.I.S.S. Collective in conjunction with Wealth of Negations and CAIWU workers March 2022.



CAIWU Press Release (February 11, 2021) and associated H.I.S.S Collective graphics were mothballed/shelved. They were developed in conjunction with the affected workers and
associates and will be recomposed as CAIWU move into the next phase of the campaign against
outsourcing at the University of East London.

-CAIWU email to UEL (February 19, 2021), highlights the university’s responsibility to its outsourced
workers, prompting UEL to “put its house in order” and withdraw its services contract with Nviro. The
aim of the letter is to remind UEL of its public commitment to Equality & Diversity and Black Lives Matter,
by drawing attention to the structural racism of ongoing victimisation and dismissals of CAWU essential
workers/cleaners by Nviro. As with the BMA, this is followed by an urgent prompt that UEL bring its
outsourced essential workers/cleaners in-house with the same rights and privileges afforded to all UEL
workers.

*Cleaners And Allied Independent Union (CAIWU). Email: communications@caiwu.org.uk
** H.I.S.S Collective: HISS@gmail.com