Richard A wrote:29 years ago, Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa.
Arneb wrote:Nachträglich herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Mactep
Richard A wrote:One day late, but still worth posting. 14 years ago yesterday, 9 Latin American cleaners at SOAS were seized in an immigration raid and deported. But there's more to the story.
A few years earlier, the cleaners had started joining a trade union and then organised to demand sick pay, holiday pay and entitlement to join an occupational pension scheme. The cleaning company (at that time, cleaning and other such services were outsourced at SOAS, as at many UK universities) did not take this well, but Theresa May's "hostile environment" for undocumented migrants came at just the right time for them. So on the morning of 12 June 2009, all cleaners were instructed to attend a health & safety briefing meeting in one of the lecture theatres at 6.30 am following the morning shift. Taxis were arranged to bring over those working at the satellite campus. All were marshalled in and the doors were closed. Then the doors were thrown open and a squad of immigration officers came in. All were seized. Some did have work permits and were later released but 9, including a heavily pregnant woman, were deported to Colombia and Brazil 48 hours later.
12 June has been marked on campus by both the trade unions and the Student Union every year since. It was not the end of the story; the episode resulted in the cleaners upping their demands, and calling for outsourcing and all workers on campus, in all capacities, to be employed directly by SOAS with all of the rights of other SOAS employees. That fight took nearly a decade but they won.
Richard A wrote:I knew the Gulf states practiced that - they even have an official term for it. I didn’t know Singapore did, though.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 65 guests