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Justice for Workers wants to express its strong opposition and anger at the untransparent and socially exclusive modus operandi with which the consultation process of “Transformation and Change” has been conducted, as well as at the particular changes put forward for the cleaning department.

We start with a little good news. After collective pressure from the union, the workers, and the campaign management has agreed to an extension in the consultation period for the estates team by one week, along with the applications to voluntary severance scheme. This is after we were told that such extensions were impossible, we see that through collective action and unity victories can be won. The fact that the various teams in the estates directorate were excluded, and the questions of the workers ignored from the middle of June until the second week of July, after all other teams had already had numerous meetings with their managers. This is not an extraordinary, incompetent breakdown of labour relations, but rather another symptom of the institution’s rotten management culture, under which students’ and workers’ voices are unwelcome, unwanted, silenced.

The School has announced ‘enhanced cleaning’ practice due to the global pandemic. The workers at the front line have repeatedly voiced their fear for their and the community’s safety because the proposed changes will see an over 40+ reduction in the cleaning team. This will mean that with a reduced workforce they will be unable to meet the high cleaning standard required for the safety of staff and students, even taking into consideration the reduction in the size of the SOAS campus. The proposed plan will have a team of less than a dozen people on site to clean all the SOAS buildings. Given the size of the campus, it is going to be impossible for so few workers to maintain a clean campus during ‘normal times’, let alone a pandemic. Expecting workers to undertake such a workload is nothing less than exploitation and callously puts the health of everyone at risk.

The proposed changes in the work schedules and work hours within the cleaning department are particularly alarming. According to the proposal put forward in the T&C plans, the new schedules will consist in a rota system by which a team will work one week from 6am to 3pm, and the following week this same team shall work from 3pm to 11:59pm and cap working hours to 37.5 hours. Many workers depend on working weeks that are 35 weekly hours; the proposed changes will have serious repercussions on their livelihoods and that of their families. Some workers - particularly those in security - will see their monthly pay reduce by almost half. They do not work such long hours because of a particular love for SOAS, but because their low wages force them to work 70+ hour weeks. They should not have to pay for management’s incompetence.

The current proposal is absurd and dangerous, as it hinders workers from taking on other jobs that could allow them to economically sustain their families. Given that SOAS will be putting a cap on the number of hours workers will be working and rotating their work time regularly, it means they will be unable to secure a stable secondary work. The financial impact on the workers will therefore be two fold, cutting precarious workers’ monthly wages from SOAS and essentially stopping them seeking a secondary work to supplement the income they will lose.

The change in shift patterns will also threaten the safety of the workers who are predominantly migrant women who live on the outer edges of London. Finishing work at midnight will mean they will be forced to take unreliable public transport, if they still run at that late hour. Journeys that take an hour will regularly take twice as long, meaning workers will essentially be working anti-social hours without the financial pay that it merits.

Furthermore, such a schedule would also prevent workers from taking regular English classes. When SOAS management has, for years, ignored its promise to provide English classes to priorly-outsourced migrant workers, or to translate meetings and emails in English, the very least it could do is not hinder workers’ struggle to overcome the English language barrier. As for the cuts in working hours, we demand a reconsideration of the proposal, or at least reparations for the hours cut.

We, the students and workers of Justice for Workers who have collectively fought for over a decade to see our community grow in respect and dignity, firmly reject these proposals. We do not believe in a “new SOAS” where the livelihoods of some must be sacrificed and sunk into poverty in order to survive the disastrous years of mismanagement and the hit of an economic crisis. The SOAS we love, the SOAS we are, supports each other and fights on a daily basis for another university in which people’s rights and dignity are never pushed into the background. There is no SOAS without us!

The exclusion of part of our community from the consultation process, as well as management’s sheer inability to provide clear answers or dignified pathways of action that can protect all of us, is something we cannot and will not accept.

The proposals put forward by the campaign:
- No cuts to the cleaning team.
- Fair compensation for workers who are going to see a cut in their monthly salary that is negotiated and agreed with the unions.
- Withdraw the proposed work pattern and alternative work. patterns be worked out in meaningful consultation with the cleaners and their union, UNISON.