Cleaners are staging a sit in at the Corporation of London’s Guildhall in
protest at the inadequate response of their employer, the contractor Sodexo
over the abusive treatment of women employees.

PRESS RELEASE:  City of London Corporation Cleaners say:  Occupy Guildhall!

Friday 23rd December, 6am onwards

The Guildhall

London

EC2V 7HH

Cleaners staging sit in at Corporation of London’s Guildhall over abuse of
women!

Cleaners are staging a sit in at the Corporation of London’s Guildhall in
protest at the inadequate response of their employer, the contractor Sodexo
over the abusive treatment of women employees.

The cleaners who are organised by the independent workers union, the
Industrial Workers of the World say their action comes after a growing
frustration with Sodexo (and their predecessor Ocean) following
persistent complaints regarding the conduct of certain members of the
management team at Guildhall.  Repeatedly complaints have been raised with
respect to varying degrees of the mistreatment especially women, including
extreme acts such as bullying, confinement of individuals, intimidation and
assault.

The cleaners say the last straw was an incident involving a manager and one
of the union representatives on Monday 21 November.  The rep Isabel Martin
was followed to a room in the basement of Guildhall, where she was blocked
from leaving with the door closed, then it is alleged a
male supervisor subjected her to an outburst of aggression and intimidating
behaviour, the terrified women felt was  under threat of real physical
violence.

The IWW London Regional Secretary Chris Ford states that ‘the union has
raised concerns and complaints of the treatment of employees on enough
previous occasions with the employers to warrant sufficient preventative
measures to safeguard the safety employees and to ensure no further
mistreatment may occur. In the summer a mass meeting of cleaners had called
for the removal of those managers responsible for ill-treatment of
workers.’  The last incident the IWW insists could have been avoided if the
concerns of workers were respected and acted upon beforehand. One cleaner
stated: ‘These big companies need to put the safety of the workers before
the reputation of the City of London
Corporation’.

The union feels Sodexo have dragged their feet over this incident – they
raised a complaint in letters of 22/11/2011 and 29/11/2011 but it took
twenty days before the women worker was formally interviewed.  Her
complaint of such a serious matter has been treated as a mere grievance.

For the last two days a number of workers have refused to undertake their
cleaning duties and are staging a sit in at the reception of the
Guildhall.  They are demanding robust action that can protect women workers
from such ill-treatment occurring again.