While Facebook has been in the news recently for their massive server crash, along with a number of other embarrassing stories connected to a whistleblower speaking out and leaking internal documents, their London offices are also the site of a much more old-fashioned class struggle.

Cleaners at Facebook London have been organising through the grassroots union CAIWU for some time and pushing back against an intensified workload, and in response facilities management company JLL and cleaning contractor Churchill have sacked Guillermo Camacho, a cleaning supervisor involved in union organising. The cleaners have been holding regular weekly protests in response to this attack, and are now set to take their resistance one step further.

The cleaners have now officially begun the process of balloting for strike action, with the ballot planned for mid-October, and industrial action to begin in December if the vote goes ahead.

In the meantime, cleaners will be continuing with their regular Friday protests, with the next two planned for the 8th and 15th of October:

• Friday October 8th, 4pm: 10 Brock Street, NW1 3FG
• Friday October 15th, 4pm: 1 Rathbone Square,W1T 1FB

CAIWU also intends to take Camacho’s case to an employment tribunal, and the cleaners have now raised the additional demand of being brought in-house, along the lines of several similar campaigns by outsourced cleaners at institutions such as the University of London and University of the Arts London.

~ Cautiously Pessimistic

Image: CAIWU.