RAIL UNION RMT today announced a series of four 24 hour strikes by cleaners employed by the Carlisle Group on their Eurostar contract at St Pancras International in their fight for jobs and pay justice after the company failed to make any meaningful effort to resolve the dispute during extensive talks at arbitration service ACAS.

Following a rock-solid 48 hour strike in September a rolling programme of strike action by the Eurostar cleaners was suspended to allow for the ACAS talks to take place on four core issues:

• The fight for the Eurostar Cleaners to be paid the London Living Wage
• Opposition to redundancies which would increase the workload on staff already stretched to breaking point.
• A culture of bullying and harassment of staff on the Eurostar cleaning contract including the introduction of Orwellian finger-printing machines
• The victimisation of RMT representative Mohammed Yellow.

The four new strike dates are:

• 05:30 hours on Friday 23rd October 2009 and 05:29 hours on Saturday 24th October 2009.
• 05:30 hours on Sunday 25th October 2009 and 05:29 hours on Monday 26th October 2009.
• 05:30 hours on Friday 6th November 2009 and 05:29 hours on Saturday 7th November 2009.
• 05:30 hours on Sunday 8th November 2009 and 05:29 hours on Monday 9th November 2009.

Between 8am and 10am on this Fridays picket (23rd October) there will be a mass protest with drums, horns and whistles in carnival style at St Pancras International and the strikers will be organising a picket exchange with postal workers who are due to strike the same day.

Bob Crow, RMT general secretary said:

“The Eurostar cleaners fight for pay and workplace justice has developed into an international campaign which has generated over 3000 emails in support from 75 countries all around the globe.

“The treatment of this multi-ethnic workforce on the prestige Eurostar rail service is nothing short of modern day slave labour and it’s a matter of national shame that cleaners on one of the last remaining publicly owned sections of our transport system are being denied the London Living Wage.

“We will be joining forces and exchanging pickets with our brothers and sisters from the postal service on Friday to ram home the message that working people in this country are sick and tired of being bullied into taking a hit on their pay and conditions.”