"“You don’t ask for power, you grab it!” – in Paris, migrant housekeeping staff are taking on a hotel giant", 17 September 2020.

For more than a year now, their lives have changed irrevocably. Having arrived in France without the qualifications required to find decent work, they are now engaged in a battle of wills with one of the country’s biggest companies: the Accor hotel group...

On 17 July 2019, 24 out of the 40 members of the housekeeping team working at the hotel on a daily basis (including a male colleague), tired of their indecent working conditions, decided to down tools and start an indefinite strike.“Our first demand is that the hotel should hire us directly”...

The strike members argue that the subcontracting system enables the various organisations to shirk their responsibilities by passing the buck to the other. The Accor group does not consider itself responsible for its subcontractors’ working conditions whilst the STN cleaning company denies any blame, claiming it is reliant on the rules dictated by Accor...

Several strikes have been held on similar grounds over the last 20 years in France...

“You don’t ask for power, you grab it!” says Kinissa. “Before going on strike, it wasn’t something I considered feasible. It’s not like that back home. For the people in my circles, it’s totally inconceivable. As an African immigrant woman coming to France, your only goal is to work to provide for your children. You’re certainly not going to be thinking about labour law...

It is thanks to their meetings with unions and the information they provided that the Ibis workers came to know that other women had fought similar battles before them and that there are similar movements abroad. Women who had never taken part in a demonstration before, started to organise, to make contact with other groups, to develop a real culture of struggle, and to make it their own...