At eight o’clock on a recent June morning, outside the University of London’s art deco Senate House, in Bloomsbury, a Latin American wake-up call is blasting away. Horns are blown, samba music bellows, empanadas and coffee are supplied, while the one-day strikers – among them cleaners, porters and receptionists – wave enthusiastically to the car drivers who honk support. This is protest as carnival.
The University of London employs a number of outsourcing companies. The strikers, who are striking under the slogan “Back in House”, want to become direct employees of the university on equal terms and conditions. Most are members of one of the country’s newest unions, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), small but rapidly growing, established in 2012 and now with about 2,500 members. It has just constituted its eighth branch, the IWGB Electricians’ Workers branch.
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