As the bosses’ crisis of profitability deepens, so too does the exploitation of those creating profits for them – the world working class. In every country and every sector, the same arsenal of attacks is being used against us. In the UK wages share of GDP has fallen from 63% to 52% since 1980.

The so-called ‘gig economy’, which reduces us all to individuals and weakens our ability to collectively resist, has been the most pernicious. Two years ago, the Resolution Foundation published a report which found that 900,000 British workers had no paid holidays (once a statutory right) whilst 1.8m didn’t get a payslip, and almost one third of workers on minimum wage had been underpaid. Evidence suggests the situation has only worsened. Little wonder, then, that workers in some sectors are refusing to accept the bosses’ latest attempts to worsen their already brutal conditions. CWO militants have joined these workers at picket lines, and here are some of our observations.

At ‘Big Four’ accounting firm Ernst & Young, outsourcing giant Mitie is trying to sack 37% of cleaners, making the rest pick up their workload. The cleaners, on zero-hour contracts, are already forced to do this when their co-workers are sick (no sick pay, naturally) under threat of disciplinary action. Constant ‘evaluation’ is used to generate excuses for sacking and whip them into higher efficiency, with inhuman indifference (one cleaner with a disability was penalised for not filling in an online portal). They’ve been on strike since 15 June, with only a handful of cleaners crossing their picket lines. Not bad, since due to IWGB doing all the organising, most cleaners have never even spoken to other workers. We saw other staff leaving work unconcerned about what the ruckus outside meant. Not only are unions separating workers in different workplaces, but also within the same one. Elsewhere, Mitie’s cleaners have been on strike at health centres across East Lancashire, and are set to strike at Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria.

At Heathrow, cleaners working at British Airways offices through another outsourcing giant OCS are paid only the legal minimum wage, far below the London Living Wage of £13.85. Despite this, OCS is accredited by the Living Wage Foundation, which conveniently masks the reality of their workers relying on food banks and struggling to survive. OCS is a huge cleaning agency used by numerous retail and corporate spaces, where many workers do not get enough hours to survive, so there is a high turnover rate and it is very easy for the firm to neutralise the effect of strike action by using scab labour on speed dial.

At City University, cleaners have gone on a series of one-day strikes and protests, organised by IWGB and UNISON. Cleaners, porters, security guards, and catering workers are all being outsourced, as is the case with many universities. Many workers are from marginalised communities and already face a brutal reality. They receive harassment in place of sick pay. Holiday entitlements are ignored and pensions slashed. Wages withheld for no due reason; zero-hours contracts hanging over their heads like daggers. Often scheduled for unsociable hours, they receive none of the support mechanisms to which directly-employed staff have access. Some are left unemployed for a third of the year. However, there are three recognised unions, and no talk of a united fightback, never mind one where workers on the ground are involved in organising. At UCL, the IWGB recently carried out a few pre-strike protests on behalf of cleaners and security guards, but instead of affected workers, only IWGB professionals and activists were present. This is how to weaken a collective fight before it even gets going. In London and Leicester, CWO militants have helped in initiating student-worker agitation groups to promote self-organisation and the unification of the struggle.

It's the same story at the London board game bar chain Draughts. On zero-hour contracts, striking workers complain that their rotas are changed without notice, leaving them financially insecure and disrupting their lives, while they are rarely able to request days off. They are also demanding paid on-site training and professional security in the evenings. As Draughts expands to a new venue in Stratford, it prepares to cut its floor staff by introducing QR code menus to de-skill them (and consequently cutting their access to tips). Even a business like Draughts, advertising itself as ‘progressive’ and pitching its staff’s expertise as an asset, cannot escape the same age-old imperative of the capitalist system everywhere: to reduce the labour costs that cut into their profits. Our involvement so far has been to encourage workers to create an independent strike committee together with the local Brewdog workers (who face similar conditions and have previously failed with their strikes). Hospitality workers, rarely organised, have also been striking at Rock City in Nottingham and Village Hotel in Glasgow where they cite unpaid breaks, low wages and inadequate health and safety.

Private employers are not the only ones attacking workers of course. In Birmingham, refuse workers employed by the council have been on strike since March. They are facing devastating proposed cuts, which would slash £8,000 annually from each worker's salary. Lorry drivers are being systematically demoted. These savage measures stem from council funding cuts imposed by successive Conservative and Labour administrations. Long-standing friends, the Unite leadership is now appalled to be fighting a Labour council. Refuse workers have been striking in Sheffield too, but while workers take to picket lines, GMB and Unite argue among themselves over which trade union the bosses should recognise.

In July, tens of thousands of resident doctors joined a five-day nationwide strike over the NHS’s infamous conditions and pay, which has been cut by a fifth in real terms since 2008. Several invoked the strike waves of 2018 and 2023, demanding a return to more aggressive industrial action, and criticised the British Medical Association's spineless approach.

Across the UK, 40% of universities are running at a loss after continuous defunding and marketisation since the ‘80s. The bosses respond with low wages, job cuts, heavier workloads and rent hikes. Redundancies mean staff lose their livelihoods, and a hellish job market awaits them. The remaining staff will be overworked, their pay falling in real terms, and students will be expected to pay more. Academics and auxiliary service staff have been out on strikes across the country, but as usual, UCU and Unison keep their actions separate despite sharing a workplace. The University management get away with it.

Self-Organised Unity

We are entering a period of renewed class struggle. So far, however, these strikes remain fragmented. This is not least thanks to unions dividing workers in different sectors or even in the same workplace. Furthermore, playing by the law – as unions must do to secure their permanent existence in capitalist society – means playing by the bosses’ rules. At Draughts, kitchen staff have not been involved after the UVW submitted the legally required strike ballot notice, which had to include worker numbers by position, where one kitchen worker was immediately identified and then sacked.

At Hinkley C Power Station, construction workers walked out against both bosses and unions over management bullying. They won. The offending manager was sacked within a few days. Working-class self-organisation coordinated by mass assemblies, open to all workers, to coordinate our struggles and wrest control from union negotiators can win.

The Way Ahead: Let’s Get Political

Wherever internationalists are, we work to encourage the unification of nearby workers and for the revolutionary perspective that will take us beyond mere survival to fighting for a proper life.

The cleaners’ strike wave is only the latest since the last in 2016-2020, over the same threat of redundancies. Even if we stop them from making our lives even more miserable for a while, the bosses will come back for more eventually! There can be no escape from these relentless assaults and inhuman existence under capitalism which is in desperate crisis. The solidarity in workers’ struggle organs will be the foundation of any new society. That different society is only possible on a global scale. To shatter our chains and achieve true liberation, we must abolish the capitalist system. Disconnected uprisings can unite and expand, but they need to pose a political question about what kind of world we want to live in. Without an international political organisation armed with a revolutionary political programme the working class is fighting with one hand behind its back. That organisation does not yet exist but steps are being made. We call on every militant who wants to take a step forward in the fight for a new world community of ‘freely associated producers’ to get in touch with us.

The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 72) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.