Seven Week Safety Strike

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Five cleaners at Holbrook Annexe of North East London GMWU organiser McCall has refused to go beyond making the picket official.

By this means he has cut the cleaners off from strike pay and from strike support from other GMWU members in the Poly.

But the spirit and determination of the cleaners is stronger than ever and shows the underlying militancy of workers against the bureaucracy's attempts at sell outs.

ASBESTOS The strike finally broke out after a summer of lies and provocation by the employers over the use of asbestos in alterations being made to the building.

First the contractors came in and threw out thousands of pounds worth of equipment into a skip, from a department only set up two years ago.

Then they began to saw up undampened asbestos and left it lying around.

Both the Polytechnic Safety Officer and the Factory Inspector denied there was any danger and the builders maintained it was "plasterboard"

The final straw came when LETTER: cleaners were asked to clear up all the builder's mess, provided by their superior with only cold water and liquid soap to do the job. By this time one of them had already spent three weeks in hospital and four more off work with a disease which seemed clearly related to the asbestos dust.

REGISTER

• The cleaners began an immediate picket, demanding a register of all people who had entered the building since June, that a unionised industrial cleaning firm should clear up and that the safety of the building should be established by a GMWU analyst.

Now their demands have grown to include the reinstatement of the cleaners sacked during the dispute, full back pay, and that the Poly should employ only unionised cleaners.

RECORD Wally Sutton, a former Newham councillor, secretary of the Polytechnic NALGO branch, Assistant Services Officer and as such supervisor of the cleaners, has also had his anti-working class record dragged in the mud.

For years he has exploited the cleaners to the extent of forcing them to provide their own cleaning materials such as broom heads.

He has consistently refused to provide coverage for absent staff or to reassess the pay structure as the annexe building has been reorganised and made more complicated to clean.

The cleaners' struggle lays an important basis for a systematic opening of the books of Newham Council and the Polytechnic to reveal their anti-working class practices.

And the demand for inspection of the sealed asbestos by a GMWU analyst approved by the cleaners establishes the essential principle that it is only by independent action that workers can establish safe working conditions.

Other unions in the Poly such as NUS and NATPHE have correctly pledged their support to the cleaners.

Contríbutions to the cleaners who are on a 16-hour-a-day picket with no strike pay are desperately needed and should be sent to:

Holbrook Cleaners Strike Fund, c/o 46, London Rd., Plaistow, London E13.

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Polytechnic are now in their seventh week of strike. Their