Strikes over attempts to slash staff salaries by up to £6,000 at lettings software provider Goodlord will disrupt services for Winkworth and other London estate agents, Unite, the UK’s leading union, warned today (Wednesday 10 February).

More than 20 Unite members employed in Goodlord’s London-based referencing department, which provides tenant checks for estate agents, will undertake a series of strikes between Monday 22 February and Friday 26 February.

Under the fire and rehire plans, Goodlord’s referencing staff’s pay would plummet from £24,000 to £18,000 – less than the London living wage of £21,157 – while their maternity, holiday and sick pay would also be reduced.

Referencing staff are the only workers employed by the company to have been singled out for fire and rehire attacks.

Impacted staff have been told by the company that since they are now expected to work permanently from home after their central London office was closed in October, they do not need to live in London.… Read on ...

Last Thursday 11th February campaigners form Save our Square, and others, attended the live-streamed Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall. We swarmed there like bees! We did this because the WF Planning Committee passed new plans for the town square, which includes constructing 2 monster blocks of 34 and 26 storeys, with over 500 flats – but none of them affordable for the 9000 on the housing waiting list, the low paid or even for teachers and nurses. They are just a profit-making venture for a South African investment company.

The next stage is for the plans to go the GLA to be approved – or not – by the mayor. Despite the quite controlled event, we put in loads of questions, and organised our forces to make such an intervention that Sadiq Kahn referred to us as “the People’s Republic of Waltham Forest”! The event had a bit of a Gamestop flavour!… Read on ...