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hola companeros,
greetings from amsterdam. i wanted to share some
general information
about the
cleaners campaign in the
netherlands.
workers are organizing in 4 cities: the hague,
utrecht, maastricht and
amsterdam (specifically at schiphol airport). for the
first time
workers
in each city are forming city-wide committees and
coordinating with
each
other. most of the workers are migrants from morocco,
turkey, suriname
(hindu and criolle), and others. in maastricht they
are mainly dutch
working poor.
we will be fighting against the largest and most
abusive cleaning
company
in the netherlands CSU. CSU cleans major dutch
government agencies
(ministries) in the hague, the train stations, major
universities (TU
Delf,
Utrecht U.) the amsterdam police stations and various
multi-nationals
including Phillips. CSU has been systematically
violating workers
labour
rights by threatening and repressing our organizing
efforts.
we are fighting for a living wage, full time work and
stronger
organizing
rights. the goal of the campaign however is to build
sustainable
worker
structures able to fight, strong community support in
the form of an
on-going solidarity network that could support future
labor struggles
in
retail, agriculture and domestic work. most
importantly our goal is to
raise migrant and precarious workers rights struggles
in the
netherlands
where xenophobia and neoliberal labour transformations
are on the
increase.
we are organizing support from the social movement,
migrant
communities,
religious leaders, artists, students, etc. we are
collaborating
directly
with the flexmen in amstedam and Merijke Bijl in the
hague where she
has
been
involved for a long time in the struggles of
undocumented migrants. we
are
planning to build direct relationships with the
agricultural and
domestic
worker organizations.
our time-line
the campaign will go public on nov. 17th this year
with a big public
kick
off event where workers from all the cities and
supporters will come
together (you are all invited to come!)
from nov. 17th on we will start small to medium
coordinated actions in
each
city against CSU clients: delegations, leafletings,
picket lines, etc.
in mid-december we want to do a large action bringing
workers and
supporters
to one city, and further christmas-related smaller
actions (in schiphol
for
example).
after christmas break we will re-engage with small to
medium actions
from
january on key targets to begin escalation.
we are planning to compress in february and bring
things to a boiling
point
and settlement in march.
we will not be able to strike nationally but we might
do key small
strikes
with swarming actions on key corporate or government
targets.
international solidarity
it would be great to organize a forum/working meeting
with some
european
allies in amsterdam around key time(s) to impulse the
campaign and
discuss
further issues of precarity & organizing (just a
thought)
the workers would benefit very much if we are able
coordinate
international
actions against multi-nationals or dutch embassies at
some point in
december or next year - we will try to outreach to the
groups and union
allies that helped us on the houston janitor campaign
(berlin, milan,
london, etc.) but it would be great to imagine how to
expand the
support.
en solidarity, valery
val <val@???>
____________________________________________________________________________________
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