"Call for Solidarity Facebook Cleaners Protest 26th -11 -21", 15 November 2021

Facebook's London cleaners are to step up their campaign against excessive workloads and to be brought in house with a major protest on Friday November 26th...

The cleaners have been campaigning since June about increased workloads which are making them exhausted and ill. Their employer, Churchill Cleaning, which took over the Facebook contract in January, has added eight extra floors to the six that used to make up the cleaners' schedule. Churchill has failed to provide any extra resources to meet the increased workload.

Facebook itself has consistently refused to intervene on behalf of its cleaners. The Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union, has approached the company on multiple occasions, but it has consistently refused to get involved...it simply repeats the mantra that these are matters for Churchill and for its facilities management contractor JLL. Despite repeated enquiries from CAIWU, Facebook has declined to comment on the cleaners’ request to be brought in house.

...the prospect of industrial action grows increasingly likely. CAIWU has already served Churchill with notice of its members' intention to vote about the possibility of strike action...CAIWU organiser Bruce Coker says that striking is very much a last resort, but that the cleaners feel they've been left with no other choice...

One former cleaner who won't be taking part in any strike is Guillermo Camacho, the supervisor dismissed...for allegedly poor performance of his duties. Both CAIWU and Camacho, whose reinstatement case was rejected by the employment tribunal last week, continue to insist that the real reason behind his dismissal was his trade union activities...Camacho's unfair dismissal case is scheduled to be heard by the tribunal in the new year, by when his former colleagues are hoping their campaign will have resulted in a return to tolerable workloads at Brock Street.

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