Goodlord strikes over £6,000 pay cuts

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 ...

Gerry Kelly R.I.P.

Sad news that blacklisted union activist, socialist and musician, Gerry Kelly has passed away. As a young construction union activist from Birmingham in the 1970s, Gerry was involved in disputes in the midlands and London. After finding it difficult to get work he retrained as a teacher and was active in the NUT, becoming a well known socialist figure in his adopted Waltham Forest. After the Consulting Association blacklist was exposed he spoke on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group at union meetings in East London. Gerry was also a musician, recently being a songwriter and occasional guitarist for The Fred Hampton Appreciation Society, the London soul band named after the murdered Black Panther.