SOAS SPIRIT
THE
FREE
30 OCTOBER 2017
YOUR INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER
‘WARNING SHOT’ OVER UNIVERSITY p3 DEFICIT
HUMANS OF SOAS
p9
ISSUE 1
THE CHAGOSSIANS’ RIGHT TO RETURN HOME p12
SOAS management announces end to outsourcing by September 2018 Ali Mitib, BA Law and Politics On 4th August 2017, Paula Sanderson, the Registrar of SOAS, notified the Student Union that SOAS will ‘stop outsourcing its core support services to private contractors from September 2018’. In contrast to the previous plans of SOAS management to bring only the cleaners in-house by 2019, this announcement will apply to all outsourced workers at SOAS. The shift from using the outsourcing companies of Elior and Bouygues to direct employment is estimated to impact approximately 120 workers at SOAS. By September 2018, staff in central facilities teams and all core support staff -including cleaners, security guards and caterers–will be guaranteed the equal workers’ rights extended to all employees of SOAS. These rights include the right to sick pay, pensions and paid holiday leave. In their letter to the Students’ Union, SOAS management committed themselves to ‘engage with every single colleague affected so that they are fully involved throughout the process, working closely with both companies to enable a smooth transition over the next 12 months’. This announcement followed the student occupation of the Directorate over the summer as a protest against the proposed closure of the Refectory announced on the 12/6/17 – on the day that, exactly eight years ago, 9 workers were rounded up in the Luca Lecture Theatre handcuffed, and forcefully deported, and SOAS students were remembering and commemorating the event. This announcement follows a similar announcement that cleaners in LSE will be brought in-house by Spring 2018. For 11 years, the green Justice for Cleaners (J4C) and the purple banner of the Justice for Workers (J4W) campaign have been banner under which the SOAS community
Members of the J4W Campaign celebrate the announcement
– staff and students alike – have resisted and fought in the pursuit of workers’ rights. The campaign has been spearheaded by the outsourced workers, a majority of whom are migrants of Central and South American descent. Through protests, occupations and negotiations, the campaign has confronted management – who have claimed to hold the values of “promoting equality and celebrating diversity”–on the lack of basic workers’ rights for the outsourced workers, who perform vital services essential to the operation of the university.
History of the campaign
The campaign began in 2006 after Ocean, the outsourcing company operating in SOAS at the time, did not pay the workers for three months. The cleaners began to organise with UNISON representatives on the SOAS campus and three cleaners (Luis Ojeda, Consuelo Moreno and Lenin Escudero) were elected to the role of Union Representatives. After securing their wages, the cleaners unionised to achieve their aims of procuring the right to the London living wage, holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, to not have to suffer from zero
hour contracts, and sexual harassment. From 2007-2009, the campaign turned into a movement that was inspirational to other outsourced workers in London’s universities. Notably, the Birkbeck University gave in to the demands of their workers and brought them in-house. On the 12th June 2009 the Home Office Raid occurred – an event that is marked annually by the J4W campaign. According to the J4W campaign, UK Border Agency officials stormed into an Continued on page 3