Real Living Wage for Mitie cleaners

From Mick Cash, RMT General Secretary

I’m writing to you as Secretary of your Trades Council to ask you to support RMT members fighting poverty pay. Network Rail have contracted out the cleaning of six of their stations to an outsourcing company. Our members who clean stations at Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Central, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool Lime Street, Leeds and Birmingham New Street work for Network Rail but are employed by Mitie Group, one of the biggest outsourcing firms in Britain. At the moment they are paid the National Minimum Wage and they’re fighting to win at least the Real Living Wage.

The treatment of these people is a scandal. Network Rail is a public company that boasts about wanting to be an employer of choice and a place where people are proud to work, yet they set the contract for cleaning these stations at the level of the Minimum Wage. Mitie Group paid their shareholders more than £177 million over the last six years and their CEO Phil Bentley earned £2.2 million last year.… Read on ...

Defend a Woman’s Right to Choose

Trades council members joined a counter protest on Saturday 4 October in opposition to the UK branch of the American anti-abortion organisation the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBRUK).

CBRUK have been targeting Walthamstow MP, Stella Creasy, using a poster of her image alongside the image of a foetus.

The council has used bylaws to prohibit the image being displayed throughout the borough saying “residents and visitors to our town centre … have the fundamental right to use the town centre without being confronted with distressing images.”

However, CBRUK have sidestepped the order by using different images and have said they will continue the campaign.

Waltham Forest Trades Council stands in opposition to CBRUK’s campaign and defends a woman’s right to choose.