The cleaners have now been protesting for three months – in defiance of legal threats from Mitie - in a determined effort to win their jobs back.

With the help of a megaphone kindly donated by a branch of Unite, they begin their protest. The cleaners and their supporters don flourescent vests, blow whistles and shout slogans demanding the reinstatement of the unfairly sacked cleaners.

The cleaners, who are all migrant workers from Latin America and Africa, organised their workplace through Unite's Justice for Cleaners campaign, eventually winning a pay rise that increased their poverty wages close to the London living wage of £7.45 an hour.

But in a move that the workers' shop steward Edwin Pazmino described as all too common, the privateer - which raked in almost £70 million profits last year - attacked the newly organised workers by changing their shifts in retaliation.

"Mitie demanded that instead of working a part-time evening shift, we must work a full-time night shift," he explained.

"But this was impossible for those who have children - some of us refused and the company sacked us."

The cleaners have been deluged with solidarity from London's Latin American community, with interviews on Spanish language radio stations highlighting their fight as an example of how bosses are exploiting migrant workers.

Last Saturday Mr Pazmino spoke to a packed public meeting of the Coordinadora Latinoamericana, an alliance of various Latin American community and solidarity campaigns including the Latin American Workers Association. The subject was 'Amnesty for some or Papers for all' and sought to mobilise for the May 4 migrants march in London on a non-exclusionary platform. The meeting heard how immigration controls are used to attack workers attempts to organise..

Mr Pazmino says that the workers have been encouraged by their union's apparent pledge to now take up their case.

"Unite says that it wants to support us, but it is tied by the agreement it signed in exchange for recognition with Mitie, pledging not to go to the streets to protest when there is a problem," he said.

But he points to Unite's support for the Visteon workers, who recently occupied their factories in protest at mass sackings, to suggest that the union should not be concerned about offending the bosses.

"What the Visteon workers are doing is right - this is a good way to fight," Mr Pazmino insists.

"We visited them at the Enfield factory last week to show our solidarity, and they have inspired us to continue our struggle for our jobs," he added.

Both Mitie's head of corporate affairs, and the lawyers who have threatened the cleaners with legal action if they continue to protest, have refused to respond to repeated requests for comment.

from  http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

see also  http://www.socialist.net/mitie-cleaners-fight.htm

See Mitie Demo video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CaYVPQrIYs