Westside Action
a motley crew of anarchists and activists from Bristol, Bath and South WalesArchive for amey
Builders Blacklist – Same Old Story
Billion- Pound Building Firms Blacklist Workers
The information watchdog has shut down a company which it says sold workers’ confidential data, including union activities, to building firms.
The ICO said a secret system was run for over 15 years enabling employers to unlawfully vet job applicants.
Comments entered against individuals’ names included such entries as “lazy and a trouble stirrer”, “ex-shop steward… definite problems… No Go” and “Communist Party”.
They have always been at it
Those with any knowledge of how bitterly capitalists fight any kind of organised workforce will not be surprised that firms like Taylor Woodrow, Laing O’Rourke and Balfour Beatty used the blacklist created by “The Consulting Association” (full list at the bottom of article).
The Consulting Association ( Ran by Ian Kerr) is to be prosecuted under the Data Protection Act, but blacklisting, as such, is not a crime.
The Information Commissioner’s office has already said that the firms listed above will not face prosecution, just a warning that they will, maybe,next time they do it.
I bet that’s got them worried.
In fact, knowledge of the construction industry blacklist has been known since Alan Wainwright, a former director of Balfour Beatty subsidiary Haden Young, produced the lists as part of a constructive dismissal claim against his former employers in 2000.
Many of the workers, involved with major construction site disputes in the 1990’s (like the Jubilee line extension) found it impossible to get work.
During the 1980s Balfour Beatty’s then parent company, BICC, gave £90,000 to anti-union bosses’ organisations such as Aims of Industry and the Economic League.
The Economic League, was founded in 1919 by a group of industrialists and then MP William Reginald Hall under the name of National Propaganda. Its chief function was to promote the point of view of industrialists and businessmen.
They later worked with MI5 to blacklist workers who they suspected of association with certain left wing groups, ranging from the Communist Party of Great Britain to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Mandelson said of the current scandal : “The information commissioner will need to look into this further to see whether these practices are more widespread and take the appropriate action” i.e. fuck all as far as he’s concerned.
Mandelson - Slimey as Ever (Nice one, Leila !)
I’m sure his obsession to sell off part of the Royal Mail has nothing to do with they are the UK’s most ready-to-strike workforce. Equally, I’m sure he’ll be getting very, very cross at the next dinner party he has with his business exec mates.
Full List of Blacklisting Firms :
* Amec Building
* Amec Construction
* Amec Facilities
* Amec Ind Div
* Amec Process & Energy
* Amey Construction – Ex Member
* B Sunley & Sons – Ex Member
* Balfour Beatty
* Balfour Kilpatrick
* Ballast (Wiltshire) – Ex Member
* Bam Construction (HBC Construction)
* Bam Nuttall (Edmund Nuttall)
* C B & I
* Cleveland Bridge UK
* Costain UK
* Crown House Technologies (Carillion/Tarmac Const)
* Diamond M & E Services
* Dudley Bower & Co – Ex Member
* Emcor (Drake & Scull) – ‘Ex Ref’
* Emcor Rail
* G Wimpey – Ex Member
* Haden Young
* Kier
* John Mowlem -Ex Member
* Laing O’Rourke (Laing)
* Lovell Construction (UK) – Ex Member
* Miller Construction – Ex Member
* Morgan Ashurst
* Morgan Est
* Morrison Construction Group –Ex Member
* N G Bailey
* Shepherd Engineering Services
* Sias Building Services
* Sir Robert McAlpine
* Skanska (Kvaerner/Trafalgar House)
* SPIE (Matthew Hall) – Ex Member
* Taylor Woodrow Construction – Ex Member
* Turriff Construction –Ex Member
* Tysons Contractors – Ex Member
* Walter Llewellyn & Sons – Ex Member
* Whessoe Oil & Gas
* Willmott Dixon – Ex Member
* Vinci PLC (Norwest Holst Group)
another busy week…in photos
Stansted Lock-on
On Monday, there were two actions which westsiders were involved with. You’ve probably heard all about Stansted. There hopefully will be an interview with one of the participants on this site coming up soon. You’re less likely to know about the other one:
No Borders activists from Bristol,Oxford and South Wales joined with members of the Campaign Against Immigration Controls to make a horrible noise with drums, olive oil tins, a symbol and two megaphones in a noise demo outside the HQ of Amey PLC in Oxford. Whilst No Borders North East held a solidarity picket outside the company’s Newcastle HQ.
The protest went on for three hours, the noise visibly disrupting Amey’s working day. Though security guards initially asked for protesters to leave, no police were called, it appears the company simply do not want the attention that would bring. Employees were leafleted as they left the office and there was a banner drop from the nearby car park.
Amey Noise Demo
These protests are part of a campaign against Amey Plc. In September 2008 five Colombian cleaners working for Amey at the National Physical Laboratory were suspended for criticising the company, they have since been sacked. Amey Plc have worked hand in glove with the immigration authorities, asking ‘disruptive’ workers to attend fake training sessions, which turn out to be opportunity for UKBA agents and police to detain and deport.
Check bristolnoborders.wordpress.com for more info.
If you check Bristol Indymedia you’ll see there were some reports of attacks on police stations in solidarity with our friends in Greece.
Greek Cops on Fire
These were a example one of dozens of international solidarity actions throughout Europe and beyond.
Wednesday saw the third Raytheon roof occupation of a dynamic campaign. As we write on Saturday evening, they remain on the roof.
Friday saw the opening of a squatted art space with an photo exhibition “Waiting Rooms”. This was a series of photos derelict buildings, some sadly going to waste, others happily transformed into peoples homes, and social spaces.
The exihibition continues over the weekend.
MIGRATION IS NOT A CRIME
Migration is not a crime. It is the conditions which produce forced migration that are criminal.
Persecuting migrants is nothing new of course, but within the privileged economic zone of the global north, it seems especially in the EU and the US that both legislation and conversation has taken a nasty turn about immigrants of all kinds – whether labelled “economic” or “political”.
Economic crises have been in the past an opportunity for the extreme right and the authoritarian elements within our supposedly democratic governments.
Restrictions on the type of economic migrant have already been introduced into the UK: with only those who have the “right skills” granted entry. This in itself is unjust: basically, the native country of the lucky migrant has all its skilled workers taken away, while its least well off no longer have the opportunity of temporarily boosting their meagre incomes.
Of course, what this really means on the ground is that these unskilled workers will still make it to our shores, but once here they will be less likely to be in a position to get a fair deal on wages and other working conditions.
The well-known slogan “Workers of the world unite” means what it says. It does not mean “Only workers with the correct immigration status unite”
This would be obvious to any self-respecting trades unionist you would have thought, but it is only recently that British Trades Unions have started to address this issue, and consider whether immigration controls are just. Of course, that’s not to say that many within the Trade Union movement haven’t been fighting these battles for decades: they have. But the movement as a whole has had a somewhat narrow vision of what its role might be.
Dawn Raids
For example members of UK Trade Unions carry out jobs such as Prison and Immigration Officers, as well as civilian posts within the Police which are contrary to the interests of the working class. Specifically members of the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS) carry out immigration raids on both refugee families and “illegal” migrants at the workplace. These people clearly should be excluded from the trade union movement.
In reaction to the news that there were protests (blockades) stopping immigration officers carrying out their brutal dawn raids in Scotland, Mark Sewrotka , General Secretary of the PCS had this to say:
“Members’ health and safety is our prime concern in this matter. PCS is committed to ensuring that its members in the Immigration Service, and elsewhere, have a right to a safe and secure working environment, and to be treated with dignity.”
As was commented at the time: “According to the logic of the PCS Executive, Serwotka and Godrich, the main issue in the deportation of Jews from say France during World War II would have been the health and safety of those carrying out the deportations.”
Fortunately, not everyone thinks along these lines and there has been resistance to the practice of dawn raids up and down the country. This seemed to have stopped them in Scotland, where the public and political reaction to the practice was wide scale revulsion. Outrageously, they continue in towns across England, including your own . For reports on resistance see: http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/687906
Meanwhile, employers using the leverage granted to them by the tightening of harsher laws governing the UK migrant work force have sought to lower working conditions and wages at workplaces where migrant workers predominate.
Amey
One example of this is the case of the Amey Plc Cleaners employed at the National Physical Laboratory in London. Amey, which is owned by Spanish multinational Ferrovia, took over the cleaning contract in May 2007 and found itself faced with a largely Latin American migrant workforce that had recently unionised and was taking steps to gain recognition – something afforded to all other NPL staff. The first came last year, when the company invited workers to a ‘training session’, only to bolt the doors behind them and leave them in the care of the Home Office, which promptly deported three of them, one to Colombia and two to Brazil, for not having official documents.
Since then the number of cleaners has been reduced from thirty-six to fifteen as Amey looks to cut costs as much as possible. The dismissal of the five was a direct result of the remaining workers’ attempts to protest against this trend after they wrote a leaflet to tell other staff at the NPL what was going on in the cleaning department. They were quickly sacked for bringing the company into disrepute.
Amey, which posted a net annual profit of a tidy £75 million, is well versed in these tactics. It is a majority shareholder in Tubelines, which cleans parts of the Underground. Tube cleaners who went on strike for a living wage this summer were faced with a corporate response consisting of paper checks, immigration raids and deportations to Sierra Leone and the Congo. Further background is available from the Campaign Against Immigration Control’s Website: http://caic.org.uk/ or Bristol No Borders (link on front page).
There have been a number of public demonstrations around the Amey dispute, the most recent of which was when Mel Ewell, Chief Executive of Amey plc arrived at Kingston University on 2 December to be awarded a place on the University’ Wall of Fame’. A protest picket of 80 students and staff turned out in support of the cleaners. Days before, Kingston’s UCU lecturers branch wrote to Ewell urging him to reinstate the cleaners.
On the previous Friday more than twenty protestors entered the offices of Amey Plc in High Holborn on Friday in protest at the sacking of five Colombian cleaners and the rejection of their appeal. The protesters entered the office building to give a petition letter to an Amey representative but were blocked by security in the lobby and were told Amey did not want to see them. After the occupation Julio, one of the sacked cleaners, stayed behind to give the letter but Amey still refused to see him.
There have also been two pickets in Bristol, and a noise demo is happening this Monday (8th December) outside Oxford’s Amey HQ. There is transport from Bristol: e-mail bristolnoborders@riseup.net.
Nothing to do with me, guv ?
If you think its “foreigners” alone who will suffer travel restrictions under the general clampdown, try again.
There is legislation being discussed at EU level which will restrict freedom of movement of citizens who have been
convicted of serious crime or for “repeated offences” (which may be”low level”).
These say that: “Only those exercising their rights in the spirit of the Treaty should benefit from freedom of movement.” While
referring to third country nationals the proposals would apply to EU citizens as well and allow Member States to deny entry to those who: “break the law in a sufficiently serious manner by committing serious and repeated offences”
The scope of “repeated offences” is undefined and could apply, for example, to protestors who take part in cross-border demonstrations. Though beyond the specific interest of the political activist, given the increasing proportion of the population who are criminalised it is of unfortunate significance to many other people.
Who’s gonna be next?
For further info: http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/nov/eu-restrictions-free-movement-conclusions-nov-08.pdf
ACTION STATIONS! – click for details
1.thurs 20/11: BMI AIRLINES PHONE BLOCKADE – EVERYWHERE
2.thurs:20/11 Raytheon Protest, opp. UWE frenchay Campus
3. fri 21/11: AMEY PICKET – BRISTOL ( AND LATER PUBLIC MEETING & DEMO IN OXFORD)
4. sat 22/11 BANKS BAIL OUT-BATH Marks the start of a campaign in Bath going under the heading ‘we wont pay for their crisis!’, demanding no more bank bailouts, and working towards initiating community based solutions to the financial crisis.
5. sat 22/11 2-3 pm outside Tesco Metro in Broadmead to protest against vouchers for asylum seekers, and encourage exchange of vouchers
6. tues 25/11 – I.D. CARDS- CARDIFF No Borders South Wales will be protesting outside the Cardiff Immigration office from 12 noon on the Tuesday 25th November
Chasing Amey. 22nd October in Bristol
UPDATED 22/10:Along side the picket in London outside the NPL conference at Savoy Place by the Campaign Aginst Immigration Controls, Bristol No Borders staged a Solidarity picket in Bristol. Amey were not present at their registered offices, but there was no escape as we skillfully located their current residence… just up the road . Hundreds of lealets were given out, and interaction with passerbys was mainly positive.
ah...thats where they are..
Background:
Support the Sacked Amey Workers! Equal Rights Without Borders Five cleaners employed by Amey (who have the contact for rail maintenance in Bristol) were sacked for “damaging the company image” on the 22nd of October.
Assemble (with whistles and banners) October 22nd 11.30am – 1.30pm outside:
Amey Rail Plc,Albert House, 111-117, Victoria St, Bristol. BS1 6AX
Five cleaners employed by Amey (who have the contact for rail maintenance in Bristol) were sacked for “damaging the company image” on the 2nd of October. They are going to appeal.
How were they damaging the company image? By belonging to a Trade Union and telling other staff at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London where they work what was happening to them.
The text of the offending leaflet:
“TO THE NPL STAFF:
The Amey Cleaning Department are looking for your solidarity, because LAURA JORDAN site manager is discriminating and bullying us, also has violated our employment rights, refusing to follow the grievance procedures and taken decision over the employment regulations Act.”
This is the latest in a series of measures taken against the cleaners since Amey, which is owned by Spanish multinational Ferrovia, took over the cleaning contract in May 2007 and found itself faced with a largely Latin American migrant workforce that had recently unionised and was taking steps to gain recognition. The first came last year, when the company invited workers to a ‘training session’, only to bolt the doors behind them and leave them in the care of the Home Office, which promptly deported three of them, one to Colombia and two to Brazil, for not having official documents.
Since then the number of cleaners has been reduced from thirty-six to fifteen as Amey looks to cut costs as much as possible. The current suspensions are a direct result of the remaining workers’ attempts to protest against this trend. Amey, which posted a net annual profit of a £75 million, is well versed in these tactics. It is a majority shareholder in Tubelines, which cleans parts of the Underground. Tube cleaners who went on strike for a living wage this summer were faced with a corporate response consisting of paper checks, immigration raids and deportations to Sierra Leone and the Congo.
This is the second day of actions supporting the sacked workers, with another demo happening on 22nd October outside an NPL conference in London.
It comes as part of a wider movement, including the Campaign Against Immigration Control and No Borders, demanding that that documents and border controls are dispensed with altogether, or migrant workers be regularised and given the documents they need
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