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"No peace without justice" for sacked Hillingdon Women
The Hillingdon women's valiant picket-line struggle against the exploitative employers Pall Mall has lit a beacon for low-paid workers nationwide. Emma Trickett reports.
As part of its privatisation drive in the 1980s, the Conservative government gave permission for private companies to tender for NHS trust contracts. Since then the pay and conditions of the people actually doing the work have steadily worsened.
Pall Mall took over the housekeeping contract in 1994. Pall Mall is a multi-million pound company which specialises in bidding for the cleaning contracts of large institutions like hospitals and hotels. It has won several cleaning contracts on the basis of very low tenders - based on the poor wages and conditions of its employees.
Six months after Pall Mall took over at Hillingdon, the women were asked to sign a contract which would effectively reduce their wages by up to 20%, leaving them with a pay packet reduced on average from £109 per week to a mere £84 per week.
The company set a deadline of September 1995 for the hospital's 'domestic assistants' to sign the new contracts. But 53 refused, and were immediately sacked. Since then the women have been picketing daily as various agencies ship temporary staff in.
The women feel that Pall Mall used them to test the response of workers in general to a reduction in pay and conditions. They also feel victimised by Pall Mall management, who would tell them to "be quiet" during their meagre 10-minute canteen breaks.
The women (who are 95% Asian) also make charges of racism at the company, which instructed them to bring their passports along with them to the signing of the new contract - even though some of them had been working at the hospital for 30 years. There is also evidence that the cleaning work that Pall Mall have been carrying out during the strike is actually substandard. At a Community Health Council meeting in March 1997 a hospital spokesperson admitted that the wards were not being cleaned adequately because "the tender specification was never drafted properly - leaving many areas of the hospital uncleaned for long periods". What's more, a local woman, Thelma Floyd, claimed to have picked up scabies in a hospital rest room - the hospital's chief executive apologised and thanked her for bringing the state of the rest room to their attention.
Over the strike period Pall Mall have offered the sacked women increasing amounts of compensation money - but the women want their jobs back and have declined to take a payoff. The women were supported by their union UNISON - which had made the strike official from 27 November 1995. But when Pall Mall upped the offer to £250,000 between the women, the UNISON National Executive Committee agreed - without the consent of the 53 strikers. Some of the older women and part time workers took the money, but the majority are still insisting on their reinstatement.
In February of this year Pall Mall were taken to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal. The women lost, largely they believe because a deal had already been done between UNISON and Pall Mall to bring an end to the strike. The tribunal concluded that Pall Mall dismissed the women for fair "economic, technical or organisational" reasons - an "economic and client-driven need for change". The UNISON leadership withdrew support from the women after they rejected the deal. From this weakened 'unofficial' position the women were taken by the Hillingdon Hospital Trust to the High Court, where they lost legal access to the picket line. The women, however, continue picketing on council land to this day.
Despite the long struggle and the lack of hope that the women will ever be reinstated, much has been gained. As a consequence of the Hillingdon women's actions, Pall Mall have been unable to reduce the pay and conditions of their employees elsewhere - in Basildon Hospital in Essex and Hairmyers Hospital in Scotland threatened strike action over pay cuts produced a Pall Mall climb-down.
The strike has also been damaging to Pall Mall. Because their tenders were based on the assumption that workers would accept pay decreases without making a fuss, Pall Mall have been unable to make significant profits. They made only a £200,000 profit on sales of £75.6 million last year - a tiny operating margin of 0.3%.
"Until there is justice there will be no peace," says the shop steward of the 53 sacked women, Malkiat Bilku. You can make a donation to the Hillingdon Strikers Support Fund at .... and can contact the women on the picket line mobile on 0956 135311. They are picketing every day, outside the Hillingdon Hospital.
Why not write to those "responsible":
Pall Mall Services Group Ltd 125 Acre Lane Brixton SW2 5UA Tel: 0171 2748622
For more information, and to make a donation, call the Hillingdon Strikers Support Fund: 0956 135311 |