Unite hospitality picket anti-union bar bosses

Matt Dobson reports

A picket line of bar workers, organised by Unite Hospitality for trade union recognition, took place on Saturday night, January 8, outside the Abandoned Ship on Mitchell Street in Glasgow city centre. Many passing Glasgow workers and youth on a Saturday night out were vocal in support. Youth Fight For Jobs (YFJ) and Socialist Party Scotland gave solidarity.

Unite Hospitality workers are taking action against Macmerry 300 and Abandoned Ship Ltd. Importantly, a step forward in the Scottish hospitality sector in trade union organisation has taken place in this company over the last few weeks with workers across the companies’ 13 bars in Glasgow and Dundee organising together to file a collective grievance.

Management have responded saying they will only deal with grievances individually. A Unite Hospitality activist told Socialist Party Scotland: “The Glasgow picket was quickly organised after a blatant attempt at anti-union victimisation by management at the King of Islington in Dundee who closed the bar after claims of covid breaches. Our organiser there, who has 100% staff trade union membership, filed a grievance and then was asked to return his keys in what looks like unfair dismissal”.

In a letter to a staff member management blame the staff grievance for the closure. The Unite Hospitality members’ grievance against the company includes:

• Management not informing staff about outbreaks of covid
• Close contacts and staff waiting for PCR results were threatened with a disciplinary if they did not come to work.
• No official statements or guidance from managers about LFT’s, no increased hygiene and social distancing measures to protect staff and customers
• Pay inconsistencies for years with staff not being paid sick and or holiday pay and being paid late or inconsistently
• Many staff not having contracts
• NEST pension payments being taken from payslips but not made to NEST
• Not reimbursing staff for travel costs to events or stock purchased for bars
• Inconsistencies with tax causing financial problems for staff
• Staff complaints re harassment not dealt with by management

These exploitative practices are rife in hospitality in Scotland and have been exacerbated by the unsafe profiteering by bosses during the pandemic. The workers’ movement has a key task of organising in this precarious sector.
Unless the company change their ways, reinstate the Unite organiser and deal with the grievance to satisfaction of workers other venues should be picketed quickly.

A strike by Unite across a large hospitality company with venues across the country would inspire low paid and young workers everywhere to join a union and take action.

YFJ wants to assist in every way we can in building such a struggle, linking these issues with the need to fight for a £15 an hour minimum wage and secure contracts with the right to organise in a union from day one of employment.