University of London Union

Student Guide to

RIGHTSA WORK

T

University of London Union

Know

your rights &

campaign to

improve life

at work

Student Guide to

RIGHTSA WORK

T

CONTENTSINTRODUCTIONKNOW YOUR RIGHTSORGANISING at work 101CASE STUDY #1 - Supersize My Pay: how low-paid fast-food workers fought back

CASE STUDY #2 - Fast-food unionism in France

CASE STUDY #3 - How student workers at Royal Holloway organised

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Student Guide to

RIGHTSA WORK

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CONTENTSINTRODUCTIONKNOW YOUR RIGHTSORGANISING at work 101CASE STUDY #1 - Supersize My Pay: how low-paid fast-food workers fought back

CASE STUDY #2 - Fast-food unionism in France

CASE STUDY #3 - How student workers at Royal Holloway organised

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10

12

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ulu.co.uk/rightsatwork

Over the past decade, the number of students in paid employment during term-time has risen by more than 54%. Most of us take jobs in the retail or hospitality sector – bars, high-street shops, restaurants, and hotels – where low pay, long hours, and casual exploitation are endemic. When we leave university, those of us lucky enough to get a job at all are more likely than ever to find ourselves back in retail or hospitality. Over the past five years, the number of new graduates employed in low-paid, unskilled or semi-skilled jobs has doubled.

The distinction between work and study is being slowly eroded. Huge increases in the cost of education mean we are financially forced to work to support ourselves through college or university. Control of the content of courses and research priorities by employers and businesses means that study itself is increasingly considered to just be training for the workplace. Our colleges and universities are becoming conveyor belts into the kind of low-paid jobs most of us already have before we graduate.

That means the student movement has to organise to defend our rights at work, as well as on campus. This year at ULU, I’m working with students’ union and trade union activists across London to launch an awareness-raising and organising initiative aimed at helping students know their rights as workers and gain the activist skills needed to fight for change in the workplace. We will be running skills shares, training events, ‘Know Your Rights’ stalls, conferences, organising with student staff on London campuses and much more.

Workers hold unique power in society. Our labour power produces all the goods and services on which society relies. That means we have unique potential to affect social and political change. That potential applies even if we’re student workers, working part-time in our SU bar. By working within and alongside trade unions, working students can be part of a movement that can end the low-pay, long hours, lack of health and safety, and other exploitative practises we face in our workplaces.

This pack aims to help you begin organising at work. It contains information on your basic rights as a worker as well as case studies from Britain and around the world, where young workers and working students have taken on their bosses and won. It also contains material from trade unions about how to organise, plus useful contacts to help you campaign.

If you want to organise to fight for change in your workplace, I hope this pack will be a useful tool.

In solidarity,

Daniel Lemberger CooperULU Vice President

INTRODUCTION

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One of the biggest problems young workers face is a lack of awareness about what their legal rights are. If you don’t know what you’re entitled to, it makes it easier for bosses to ignore your rights and get away with illegal practices in the workplace.

This guide outlines some of your basic rights. It’s not a comprehensive list, but should help you stand on firmer ground when you want to challenge man-agement practices.

Some rights at work depend on your employment status,or how long you’ve been working in a given workplace, but the following are rights which all workers are entitled to from their first day of employment:

PAYNational minimum wage rates will be:

£6.19 – (21+)£4.98 – (18-20)£3.68 – (16-17)£2.65 – (apprentices under 19 or 19 or over and in the first year of their ap-prenticeship)

As you can see, there’s inbuilt age discrimination in the minimum wage. For example, a 20 year-old worker could legally be paid over £1/hour less than a 21 year-old worker for doing the same job.

You’re entitled to be told, in writing, how much you will be paid and when. You’re also entitled to sick pay if you normally earn over £77 per week and have been working for over three months (or been in continuous employment for 13 weeks).

You’re entitled to at least four weeks paid leave per year. Any employment contract should set out leave entitlements. If it doesn’t, then four weeks must be given (which can include public holidays).

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

HOURSYou’re entitled to a rest break of at least 20 minutes for every six hours of work during a shift. You’re entitled to at least 11 hours’ rest in each 24-hour pe-riod, and you cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours in a single week. Your boss can ask you to work more than this, but this request must be made in writ-ing, in advance.

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HEALTH & SAFETYEmployers have a responsibility to ensure that the workplace is safe. For ex-ample, if you’re working as a cleaner using potentially dangerous bleaches and your employer has not given you proper protective gloves, your boss is acting illegally.

You’re entitled to see and have access to a properly-conducted risk assessment of your workplace, outlining all of the health and safety risks associated with the workplace and the work. You’re entitled to see your workplace’s written health and safety policy, which all workplaces employing over five people must have. You have the ultimate right to refuse to work if you do not think your boss is fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure safe working conditions.

THE RIGHT TO ORGANISENo worker can ever be sacked for joining a trade union. You cannot be sacked for asserting your entitlement to any of your basic rights. Bosses ig-nore workers’ rights when they feel confident that workers won’t stand up to them; having these legal rights is important, but they need to be enforced.

You may find the following resources useful:

•worksmart.org.uk the WorkSmart resource from the Trades Union Congress

•tinyurl.com/tucrightatwork the TUC’s main “rights at work” site

•tinyurl.com/solfedguide the “Stuff Your Boss Doesn’t Want You To Know” guide, produced by the Solidarity Federation.

•direct.gov.uk for facts on your rights at work

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

LIVING WAGE - THE WAGE NEEDED TO

COVER THE BASIC COST OF LIVING -

£8.30p/h(LONDON)

£7.20p/h(REST OF UK)Both are significantly more than the

minimum wage for those aged 18-20

One of the biggest problems young workers face is a lack of awareness about what their legal rights are. If you don’t know what you’re entitled to, it makes it easier for bosses to ignore your rights and get away with illegal practices in the workplace.

This guide outlines some of your basic rights. It’s not a comprehensive list, but should help you stand on firmer ground when you want to challenge man-agement practices.

Some rights at work depend on your employment status,or how long you’ve been working in a given workplace, but the following are rights which all workers are entitled to from their first day of employment:

PAYNational minimum wage rates will be:

£6.19 – (21+)£4.98 – (18-20)£3.68 – (16-17)£2.65 – (apprentices under 19 or 19 or over and in the first year of their ap-prenticeship)

As you can see, there’s inbuilt age discrimination in the minimum wage. For example, a 20 year-old worker could legally be paid over £1/hour less than a 21 year-old worker for doing the same job.

You’re entitled to be told, in writing, how much you will be paid and when. You’re also entitled to sick pay if you normally earn over £77 per week and have been working for over three months (or been in continuous employment for 13 weeks).

You’re entitled to at least four weeks paid leave per year. Any employment contract should set out leave entitlements. If it doesn’t, then four weeks must be given (which can include public holidays).

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

HOURSYou’re entitled to a rest break of at least 20 minutes for every six hours of work during a shift. You’re entitled to at least 11 hours’ rest in each 24-hour pe-riod, and you cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours in a single week. Your boss can ask you to work more than this, but this request must be made in writ-ing, in advance.

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Beginning a campaign to organise your fellow workers can be a daunting task, especially if you feel like you’re the only person in the workplace who feels like there are any issues. The first thing to be aware of is that this is almost certainly not the case. Almost everyone has something they would like changed or improved in their place of work. A big part of being a workplace organiser is about finding what the issues are that unite lots of people, and finding ways to take them from low-level grumbling - to things you can campaign around.

A good way to start organising a campaign in your workplace is to ‘map’ it. Ideally, you should know your workplace better than your management; that means knowing who works where, what time shifts start and finish, and what the different kinds of work that take place in your workplace are. For example, if you work in a big bar, club or venue - the workforce includes bar staff, cleaners, glass collectors, security, tech staff and possibly others. Are they all employed by the same body, or are some (cleaners, for example) employed by an outsourced contractor? When do they start and finish? Is there a break room or smoking hour where groups of workers congregate on their breaks or before/after shifts? You don’t have to know every minute detail about your workplace, but building up this kind of “map” is really helpful for getting a picture of how a workplace runs.

Another key aspect of organising is identifying issues that people care about. Even if an issue seems really small, if people feel strongly about it, it’s worth campaigning around. The Unite Union in New Zealand ran a big campaign in cinemas to win back workers’ complimentary tickets that management had taken away. A campaign doesn’t have to be around something ‘big’ (like pay), winning the ‘little’ battles gives workers the confidence to fight the bigger ones.

Producing a workplace newsletter or bulletin is an effective way to initiate some collective discussion about what the issues in your workplace are. In case study #2, Axel Persson talks about how he used bulletins to organise his branch of Quick (a fast food chain) in Paris. Writing issues down makes them easier to discuss collectively, and writing for and distributing the bulletin is an easy and accessible way for fellow workers to get involved in the campaign.

The issues you campaign around should be clear and winnable. “Better pay” is not a good campaign focus, because it’s too vague. If pay is the main issue that people want to organise around, choose a clear demand that people feel they can win. You might consider fighting for the London Living Wage (currently £8.30/

ORGANISING AT WORK 101

hour). The point is not to be prescriptive or dogmatic, and campaign around the issues that people feel strongest about.

As your campaign builds you may need to consider other tactics – petitions, sticker days (where everyone wears union stickers or stickers with a slogan/message about your issue), or more impacting direct action.

Although you might start a campaign on your own, or with just one or two others, don’t think you have

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to be some kind of superhero or martyr to win it. Campaigns run in this way are not sustainable. The point of workplace organising is to help all workers in your workplace realise their potential power, so you need to make your campaigns accessible and democratic. Hold regular meetings (outside of work time where necessary) to give people the opportunity to discuss the campaign and take ownership over its direction.

You can’t organise alone. Join a trade union as soon as you get a job, even if you’re only planning on staying in the job for a short time, and encourage everyone involved in your campaign to join as soon as possible too. Trade union recruitment shouldn’t be the main aim of your campaign but it is essential. Without unionisation, you are much less protected. In a union, you have access to resources, support networks, and activist experience to help your campaign grow and win. The ULU Student Rights at Work campaign works with many different trade unions; get in touch if you want to discuss which one would be best for you to join in your workplace.

Workplace organising isn’t easy, and it’s not about helping poor, exploited workers as if they were charity cases. It’s based on the belief that we should have a say in how our workplaces are run – because, without workers, they can’t run.

ORGANISING AT WORK 101

#1 Know your

workplace

ORGANISING

1 - 0 - 1AT WORK

#3 Choose

winnable targets

#2 Find

common ground

Supersize My Pay: how low-paid fast food workers fought back

In 2008, union organisers from the Unite (New Zealand) Union visited the UK to talk about the “Supersize My Pay” campaign, which had involved workers at McDonalds, Starbucks, and other high-street chains - they succeeded in winning union recognition and wage increases. The following text is abridged from a speech given by Mike Treen, a leading organiser in the union.*

“Over 2005-2006, there was a campaign to reunionise the fast food sector as well as call centres, hotels, casinos and similar industries. At the end of that campaign we had union-negotiated collective employment agreements at all of the big fast food chains: McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Wendy’s and some smaller ones.

We had recruited two to three thousand fast food workers. And we had organised a major political campaign associated with the key demand of $12 [about £5] an hour minimum wage and the abolition of youth rates for 16 and 17 year olds countrywide. From beginning of this year we will have won both. Winning those key demands was a big issue in New Zealand’s broader political and industrial news.

These workers had nothing to lose. But in order to fight, they had to believe you were going to fight with them, you weren’t going to be there one week and gone the next week, you were going to come back. If they were victimised you were going to protect them. If you could show that militancy, people would rise to the occasion.

We had a membership form which we copied off another union with all the usual personal details. One day one of our organisers, a hotel worker and volunteer, went to one of the nice hotels in Auckland to speak to the housekeepers and came back with a notebook full of names and addresses of people interested in joining the union, 60 names. We thought “if only she’d taken some membership forms.” Then we thought, hang on, all the information we want is name and address, phone and email. So our membership form became like a petition, with half dozen names per sheet. The process of signing up became more collective.

We made our fees simple. Our fees were 1% of earnings up to a maximum. We had to give people something before they started to pay. We told them we would deliver the company to the negotiating table. They didn’t have to pay the fees until we’d got them to sit down with representatives. A lot of people hadn’t seen a union before, they didn’t know what a union was. Our message was that you can’t negotiate individually, you can only do it as part of a collective.

CASE STUDY #1

The trial in two cinema complexes, was a great success. It was a very young, very casualised workforce. We signed up around 300 workers, which was pretty much everyone. We discovered the big issues were ones involving personal dignity. These kids were given two free tickets each week, but they were taken off you for every petty infraction. If you were five minutes late, if you had a sick day, looked the wrong way at the manager, you lost your “comps”. The main issue was having the tickets as a right.

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Supersize My Pay: how low-paid fast food workers fought back

In 2008, union organisers from the Unite (New Zealand) Union visited the UK to talk about the “Supersize My Pay” campaign, which had involved workers at McDonalds, Starbucks, and other high-street chains - they succeeded in winning union recognition and wage increases. The following text is abridged from a speech given by Mike Treen, a leading organiser in the union.*

“Over 2005-2006, there was a campaign to reunionise the fast food sector as well as call centres, hotels, casinos and similar industries. At the end of that campaign we had union-negotiated collective employment agreements at all of the big fast food chains: McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Wendy’s and some smaller ones.

We had recruited two to three thousand fast food workers. And we had organised a major political campaign associated with the key demand of $12 [about £5] an hour minimum wage and the abolition of youth rates for 16 and 17 year olds countrywide. From beginning of this year we will have won both. Winning those key demands was a big issue in New Zealand’s broader political and industrial news.

These workers had nothing to lose. But in order to fight, they had to believe you were going to fight with them, you weren’t going to be there one week and gone the next week, you were going to come back. If they were victimised you were going to protect them. If you could show that militancy, people would rise to the occasion.

We had a membership form which we copied off another union with all the usual personal details. One day one of our organisers, a hotel worker and volunteer, went to one of the nice hotels in Auckland to speak to the housekeepers and came back with a notebook full of names and addresses of people interested in joining the union, 60 names. We thought “if only she’d taken some membership forms.” Then we thought, hang on, all the information we want is name and address, phone and email. So our membership form became like a petition, with half dozen names per sheet. The process of signing up became more collective.

We made our fees simple. Our fees were 1% of earnings up to a maximum. We had to give people something before they started to pay. We told them we would deliver the company to the negotiating table. They didn’t have to pay the fees until we’d got them to sit down with representatives. A lot of people hadn’t seen a union before, they didn’t know what a union was. Our message was that you can’t negotiate individually, you can only do it as part of a collective.

CASE STUDY #1

The trial in two cinema complexes, was a great success. It was a very young, very casualised workforce. We signed up around 300 workers, which was pretty much everyone. We discovered the big issues were ones involving personal dignity. These kids were given two free tickets each week, but they were taken off you for every petty infraction. If you were five minutes late, if you had a sick day, looked the wrong way at the manager, you lost your “comps”. The main issue was having the tickets as a right.

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We also got an extra five mintues on the paid break in the shift inserted into the contract, so that people could actually have a cup of tea, or a cigarette, or whatever. This was the first time a paid break had actually been negotiated in New Zealand for a very long time.We also found that we could sign people up very quickly. That gave us confidence to move on.

In May 2005 we launched a recruitment drive against Restaurant Brands, who run Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC in New Zealand. They had 7,000 employees, the biggest employer of young people in the country. We signed up about 1,000 members in Auckland. We had little strikes, for a couple of hours each, in different stores, moving from store to store. This helped build confidence. So then we did marches in Auckland, a Town Hall meeting with a broad range of speakers, a big concert in the park. But none of this was enough.

Then a group of high school students came to us and said they wanted to organise a strike of their own. They had been inspired by our campaign and many of them worked in the stores. They wanted twenty buses, so we hired twenty buses. They filled them! The police tried to stop them marching, but they streamed through the centre of town, stopping, sitting down and screaming outside every fast food outlet. A few days later the company called us and said they wanted to talk.

We got a deal. Security of hours, a youth rate that was 90% of the adult rate, minimum length of shifts, union rights. It was only a matter of time before we knocked over McDonalds. They fought it. They gave a pay rise to all the non-union staff, they threatened to sue workers who went on strike, they threatened to sue us; but we won. The very last was Burger King.

What was proved conclusively was that young workers will fight if they think they have a chance of winning. During the campaign there were lots of texts and email messages. We did mass texting and emailing to let people know what was going on. We should have a regular electronic newsletter, that’s on our agenda. Even when we do our stop-work meetings, at Sky City for example, we do a mass text to everybody. We use it whenever we have an event.

How will we keep up the membership? We have an absolute insistence on routine visits to all of the sites. We have a monthly newspaper, which gets out to all of the sites. We also have a constant process of trying to identify delegates and get them to our regular delegates’ conference. They have a role in maintaining the organisation on their site. We can keep up membership through developing a delegate structure. Generally the employers know we could cause them quite a bit of difficulty if they don’t negotiate seriously. So delegates are pretty proud of the union and make sure people join the union. We have mostly kept up the membership, despite the huge turnover, so we must be doing some things right.

We are now looking at ways to get the minimum wage up to something like $15 an hour (which is almost two thirds of the average wage). If we can do that for some groups of workers, it will help win it more generally. The next big thing is to raise the bar of the minimum wage. We need to develop a pubic campaign around that. The other thing is fluctuating hours. Hours are more secure now, but not good enough; the companies are still not obliged to offer regular hours. There is still lots to be done.”* For the full version of the speech, see: tinyurl.com/miketreen

CASE STUDY #1

Fast food unionism in France

From 2002, activists began campaigning to unionise fast food restaurants in France. One of the workers involved – Axel Persson – tells his story

“Union activism in the fast food industry first started up after a 2002 strike in McDonalds that lasted for over a year. About a year ago, a few of us in the CGT Union decided to do some serious union work in the industry. We decided that we needed at least one person in each restaurant if we were going to be successful. Given that no one was coming to the union as a result of us leafleting outside, we decided to “colonise”, by sending members in to work there.

I applied for a job at a ‘Quick’, a French fast food chain, in Paris; the biggest in France with over 150 workers. I needed to let people know that someone in the restaurant was a union member. Either I could try to talk to every worker (of course I tried to talk to many people) or I could produce a bulletin to reach everyone. The bulletin option proved to be the most useful tool, providing a backbone for the union.

The bulletin’s contents related to the working conditions of the restaurant; everyone could recognise what the bulletin was talking about — this was their working life. This included facts about the inadequacy of the equipment, about a manager making a racist remark, promises on wages being reneged on, and so on.

I started handing it out in front of the lockers, talking to people about what was in it. I put it in each and every locker. The bulletin told the workers that the union would be operating in the workplace and if they wanted to discuss anything they could come to me.

Some of these workers had never met a union activist before, and maybe didn’t even know what purpose the union served. The first step was to explain the role of the union, that it was there to stand up for the workers.

After a few weeks of handing out the bulletin, discussions began to multiply. People began to talk about the content, point out what was missing etc. I would suggest they write the next article and people began to be associated with the bulletin. I was no longer the only person.

After about two months we had a group of members, and union sympathisers. We decided to announce the presence of the union in a bigger, more public way. We

CASE STUDY #2

put a union table outside the restaurant with flyers, papers and leaflets. Union activists from other fast-food restaurants came along. We advertised the event to the workers inside and told people they could come along to discuss any issues they might have. Several dozen people came and talked to us. It was the start of a real union of seven people within the restaurant.

After asking people what the main demands should be, we launched a petition. The demands were better pay, better job security and more regular and predictable

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CASE STUDY #2

BULLETIN!

BULLETINS ARE GREAT TOOLS TO INCREASE

PARTICIPATION

hours. We didn’t think the managers would cave into our demands. The petition was to help build organisation, to get names and contact details. We wanted show the workers what the managers were about — they rejected the demands. We got about 60 signatures.

We have organised strikes of specific groups of workers. Usually these took place between 11am and 2pm, as that’s the time when 80% of the profits are made. We organised a picket line in my kitchen, to demand gloves for handling hot water.

It is also important to address the issues that affect young workers outside of their work. In Paris, these workers come from the poor neighbourhoods and face poverty, unemployment, poor housing and sometimes police harassment. Usually they end up in the fast food industry because they need the money and there are no other jobs for them. So we used more direct political propaganda to get talking to people and get into wider discussions.

A significant proportion of the workers leave after a short time. They want to find something better. It has been difficult to convince people to join a union if they don’t intend to stay. That is why we make sure that the people building the union whom we rely on intend to stay there for at least six to eight months.

All of us working in fast food unionism in France agree that our activity has to be extremely dynamic, offensive, radical and directly political. If union activism has no backbone no one will see the need for it. As the saying goes, you should be “as radical as reality itself” if you want to be up to the task.

Any time strike action has happened in fast food outlets in France it has always been very radical, with demonstrations, picket lines and occupations. People don’t usually go on strike but when they do it usually lasts. For example, the first strike ever in fast food was not over pay, but a solidarity strike in defence of two sacked union activists. It lasted for a year, and they won.”

- Abridged from tinyurl.com/axelpersson

How student workers at Royal Holloway organised

In 2011 and 2012, activists – including student bar workers – at Royal Holloway University ran a student worker organising campaign. Daniel Lemberger Cooper, then President of Royal Holloway Students Union and now ULU Vice President, tells the story:

“Our campaign at Royal Holloway began as an awareness-raising campaign about rights at work. We put out posters and leaflets around campus which focused on basic rights around pay, terms and conditions, health and safety, and made the basic case for trade unionism.

We held “know your rights” meetings, which we targeted both at university staff and campus students. We established a relationship with the existing GMB trade union branch on campus and found out shift-change times for cleaners, porters and grounds staff so we were able to leaflet them.

We held a meeting for student workers employed by the Students’ Union in November 2011 aimed at discussing what people’s issues were. About 40 people came, and there were really good discussions as well as a lot of enthusiasm to start campaigning around the issues facing working students.

Workers themselves ran the meeting and decided to organise an informal representatives structure, with elected reps for each section of the workforce (bar staff, catering, tech, etc.). The idea was that reps would be a point-of-contact for people with concerns or issues at work, but also make the case for trade unionism and organisation amongst the wider student workforce.

The meeting also produced a list of demands based on what people felt the key issues were. The three focuses agreed upon were breaks, pay and representation.

The demand around breaks was for people to take the breaks they were legally entitled to, which is endemic in a lot of service and retail sector workplaces. The pay demand started off as a call for a small wage increase, but as the campaign became more ambitious, it then shifted to demanding the London Living Wage for student workers. The demand for better representation started off by calling for an improved staff forum. That shifted to demanding that the students’ union management recognise the GMB and begin to bargain collectively with the workforce.

The campaign produced an industrial bulletin called Student Worker which brought all our demands and ideas together. People found that hugely useful, because it was a way in which to approach your workmates and start a discussion. As well as people leafleting workmates, activists also leafleted workers on the busy

CASE STUDY #3

SU nights.

The campaign has already made a real difference. People are taking their breaks now, which is a big improvement in people’s lives at work which wouldn’t have happened without our campaign.

There’s also been a small degree of levelling-up of pay at the SU, and we’re now beginning to lobby the University to pay SU staff a minimum of the London Living Wage. We’re also making progress on the issue of recognition and are

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attempting to go through processes necessary to win formal recognition. We found a lot of the workers didn’t know what a trade union was, and many of those that did, didn’t feel it had any relevance to their lives. We had to build up a basic level of consciousness and confidence around collective organisation before we could push the issue of trade union membership.

That’s not to say we avoided talking about it; we always had membership forms available at every meeting, but we wanted to run a campaign that was about helping workers self-organise to win change at work, rather than a campaign that was simply about recruiting people to the GMB trade union. Around 25 workers have joined the union, which is a good start.

Our model was based on a group of workers in a given workplace - the Royal Holloway SU - self-organising around practical, winnable issues. We don’t want to set up a hub for student workers or co-opt a couple of activists to just do casework. Getting people to think of themselves as workers, and making the basic case for trade unionism has been a key part of what we’ve done since the beginning. We’ve moved beyond the idea of pushing trade union membership as “protection” or as an insurance policy and towards building a conception of collective organisation that sees a union as a tool you can win change at work.

One of the wider reasons we wanted to do this was to challenge some of the University management’s attitudes about work and employability. University bosses and the government see education as training for the workplace. There’s a lot of pressure on students to see their time at university as being about making themselves more employable for the future.

Big corporations come onto campus to push their graduate schemes and talk about the wonderful jobs we can get if we do well at university, but the reality is that most of us won’t have access to those jobs - we’ll be getting low-paid, semi-precarious jobs in the service, retail and hospitality sector. Helping people develop a class consciousness and see themselves as workers while they’re still on campus - I believe is important.

The campaign has also been about connecting students to the existing labour movement. At one of the campaign’s meetings, we also discussed the public sector pensions dispute and how student workers could support the strikes. I wanted to build up an idea of the campus as a workplace, and show how nothing happened on campus, or in wider society, without someone’s labour power making it happen, I wanted to show working students how they were a part of that.

What we’ve done at Royal Holloway has shown that the model can work. It’s powerful positive propaganda for those people in the labour movement who say you can’t organise transient workers in semi-precarious, low-paid jobs.

CASE STUDY #3

ROYAL HOLLOWAY

attempting to go through processes necessary to win formal recognition. We found a lot of the workers didn’t know what a trade union was, and many of those that did, didn’t feel it had any relevance to their lives. We had to build up a basic level of consciousness and confidence around collective organisation before we could push the issue of trade union membership.

That’s not to say we avoided talking about it; we always had membership forms available at every meeting, but we wanted to run a campaign that was about helping workers self-organise to win change at work, rather than a campaign that was simply about recruiting people to the GMB trade union. Around 25 workers have joined the union, which is a good start.

Our model was based on a group of workers in a given workplace - the Royal Holloway SU - self-organising around practical, winnable issues. We don’t want to set up a hub for student workers or co-opt a couple of activists to just do casework. Getting people to think of themselves as workers, and making the basic case for trade unionism has been a key part of what we’ve done since the beginning. We’ve moved beyond the idea of pushing trade union membership as “protection” or as an insurance policy and towards building a conception of collective organisation that sees a union as a tool you can win change at work.

One of the wider reasons we wanted to do this was to challenge some of the University management’s attitudes about work and employability. University bosses and the government see education as training for the workplace. There’s a lot of pressure on students to see their time at university as being about making themselves more employable for the future.

Big corporations come onto campus to push their graduate schemes and talk about the wonderful jobs we can get if we do well at university, but the reality is that most of us won’t have access to those jobs - we’ll be getting low-paid, semi-precarious jobs in the service, retail and hospitality sector. Helping people develop a class consciousness and see themselves as workers while they’re still on campus - I believe is important.

The campaign has also been about connecting students to the existing labour movement. At one of the campaign’s meetings, we also discussed the public sector pensions dispute and how student workers could support the strikes. I wanted to build up an idea of the campus as a workplace, and show how nothing happened on campus, or in wider society, without someone’s labour power making it happen, I wanted to show working students how they were a part of that.

What we’ve done at Royal Holloway has shown that the model can work. It’s powerful positive propaganda for those people in the labour movement who say you can’t organise transient workers in semi-precarious, low-paid jobs.

CASE STUDY #3

ROYAL HOLLOWAY

USEFUL CONTACTSGMB (general union, anyone can join)gmb.org.uk

Unite (general union, anyone can join)unitetheunion.org

Unison (public sector union; join if you are a nursing student or working in a campus job where Unison already organise)unison.org.uk

University and College Union (academic workers’ union; join if you are a PhD or postgraduate student also doing teaching/lecturing work)ucu.org.uk

National Union of Teachers (teachers’ union; join if you are a PGCE student) teachers.org.uk

Industrial Workers of the World (radical industrial union) iww.org.uk

Bloomsbury Fightback (student-worker direct action campaign group active on Bloomsbury campuses)bloomsburyfightback.wordpress.com

Daniel Lemberger Cooper - ULU Vice Presidentdaniel.cooper@ulu.lon.ac.uk

Student Guide to

RIGHTSA WORK

T

USEFUL CONTACTSGMB (general union, anyone can join)gmb.org.uk

Unite (general union, anyone can join)unitetheunion.org

Unison (public sector union; join if you are a nursing student or working in a campus job where Unison already organise)unison.org.uk

University and College Union (academic workers’ union; join if you are a PhD or postgraduate student also doing teaching/lecturing work)ucu.org.uk

National Union of Teachers (teachers’ union; join if you are a PGCE student) teachers.org.uk

Industrial Workers of the World (radical industrial union) iww.org.uk

Bloomsbury Fightback (student-worker direct action campaign group active on Bloomsbury campuses)bloomsburyfightback.wordpress.com

Daniel Lemberger Cooper - ULU Vice Presidentdaniel.cooper@ulu.lon.ac.uk

Student Guide to

RIGHTSA WORK

T

USEFUL CONTACTS

Student Guide to

SUPERSIZE MY PAY7pm - 6th November 2012

University of London Union - Malet Street, WC1E 7HY room 3D.

How young workers in New Zealand took on the world’s biggest fast food chains - and won.

In 2005/2006, young workers collectively organised to take on their fast food bosses over low pay and the exploitation they faced at work.

After direct action campaigning they won significant pay increases, including the abolition of the youth rate minimum wage. How did they do it? Can we do it here in the UK too?

Come along to watch the film and discuss the ULU Rights at Work campaign.

Contact daniel.cooper@ulu.lon.ac.uk

for further details

FREE FILM SHOWING

University of London Union

Student

RIGHTSA WORK

T GOODGE STREETTUBE STATION

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

University of London UnionMalet Street, London, WC1E 7HY

ulu.co.uk/rightsatwork