Hello,
I am in Colombia working with a Colombian network of social organisation doing solidarity accompaniment.
You can read about my experiences and reflections here.
http://gizzacroggy.blogspot.com/
If you want to be informed when the blog is updated email me at gizzacroggy at gmail.com
Thanks
12.10.08
Solidarity Picket with Sacked Amey Workers: Wed 22 Oct
Bristol No Borders - Picket Call Out
Support the Sacked Amey Workers! Equal Rights Without Borders
Assemble (with whistles and banners) October 22nd 11.30am - 1.30pm outside Amey Rail Plc ,Albert House, 111-117, Victoria St, Bristol. BS1 6AX
Five cleaners employed by Amey (who have the contact for rail maintenance in Bristol) were sacked for "damaging the company image" on the 2nd of October. They are going to appeal.
How were they damaging the company image? By belonging to a Trade Union and telling other staff at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London where they work what was happening to them.
The text of the offending leaflet:
The Amey Cleaning Department are looking for your solidarity, because LAURA JORDAN site manager is discriminating and bullying us, also has violated our employment rights, refusing to follow the grievance procedures and taken decision over the employment regulations Act.
This is the latest in a series of measures taken against the cleaners since Amey, which is owned by Spanish multinational Ferrovia, took over the cleaning contract in May 2007 and found itself faced with a largely Latin American migrant workforce that had recently unionised and was taking steps to gain recognition. The first came last year, when the company invited workers to a ‘training session’, only to bolt the doors behind them and leave them in the care of the Home Office, which promptly deported three of them, one to Colombia and two to Brazil, for not having official documents.
Since then the number of cleaners has been reduced from thirty-six to fifteen as Amey looks to cut costs as much as possible. The current suspensions are a direct result of the remaining workers’ attempts to protest against this trend. Amey, which posted a net annual profit of a £75 million, is well versed in these tactics. It is a majority shareholder in Tubelines, which cleans parts of the Underground. Tube cleaners who went on strike for a living wage this summer were faced with a corporate response consisting of paper checks, immigration raids and deportations to Sierra Leone and the Congo.
This is the second day of actions supporting the sacked workers, with another demo happening on 22nd October outside an NPL conference in London.
It comes as part of a wider movement, including the Campaign Against Immigration Control and No Borders, demanding that that documents and border controls are dispensed with altogether, or migrant workers be regularised and given the documents they need.
The text of the offending leaflet:
TO THE NPL STAFF:
The Amey Cleaning Department are looking for your solidarity, because LAURA JORDAN site manager is discriminating and bullying us, also has violated our employment rights, refusing to follow the grievance procedures and taken decision over the employment regulations Act.
This is the latest in a series of measures taken against the cleaners since Amey, which is owned by Spanish multinational Ferrovia, took over the cleaning contract in May 2007 and found itself faced with a largely Latin American migrant workforce that had recently unionised and was taking steps to gain recognition. The first came last year, when the company invited workers to a ‘training session’, only to bolt the doors behind them and leave them in the care of the Home Office, which promptly deported three of them, one to Colombia and two to Brazil, for not having official documents.
Since then the number of cleaners has been reduced from thirty-six to fifteen as Amey looks to cut costs as much as possible. The current suspensions are a direct result of the remaining workers’ attempts to protest against this trend. Amey, which posted a net annual profit of a £75 million, is well versed in these tactics. It is a majority shareholder in Tubelines, which cleans parts of the Underground. Tube cleaners who went on strike for a living wage this summer were faced with a corporate response consisting of paper checks, immigration raids and deportations to Sierra Leone and the Congo.
This is the second day of actions supporting the sacked workers, with another demo happening on 22nd October outside an NPL conference in London.
It comes as part of a wider movement, including the Campaign Against Immigration Control and No Borders, demanding that that documents and border controls are dispensed with altogether, or migrant workers be regularised and given the documents they need.
8.10.08
Cinema Klandestino @ the Cube Fri 10th Oct
Shrouded in mystery in the Cube programme:
http://microplex.cubecinema.com/cgi-bin/diary/programme.pl#4045
it can now be revealed that:
This Friday, the 10th of October, Cinema Klandestino return for our 4th night at the Cube Cinema to present:
Violet of a Thousand Colours
Dir: Harold Trompetero
Colombia, 2005
doors @ 8pm
£4/3 (Bring yer badge!)
This film has not been internationally released for the star, Flora Martinez, has prohibited its director, Harold Trompetero from showing it in Colombia or anywhere else. She claims that the movie was made for experimental film purposes and that Trompetero wants to jump on the bandwagon of the commercial success of her next film Rosario Tijeras (2005)
Despite this, it was shown at the Bogotá Film Festival in October 2005, in the Cartagena Film Festival in March 2006 and in La Palma Island International Film Festival in July 2006, where it won several awards.
It is now being screened for the first time ever in the UK.
Low-budget, raw, and ultimately audacious, Violet of a Thousand Colours is set in New York and revolves around a nameless woman. A woman with all the defects and qualities of a human being. A woman who one day takes the decision to exist no more, simply because she is tired of life.
She begins to prepare for her death. Her plan is to cut her veins in the bathtub, surrounded by candles and rose petals scattered on the floor and remember each moment of her life until her body gives out and her brain ceases to irrigate blood. She plans to lose consciousness and then sink into the warm and tranquil water for all eternity or until someone finds her dead.
For her the important thing is to die, to die remembering, to die dreaming, to die like she always wanted, a perfect painting for the painter, the only photograph that will annihilate the forensics photograph, the perfect scene for a film director. A suicide artistically perfect, committed by a woman like any other.
Through the film, Trompetero explores adverse sentiments inherent in femininity and the human condition in general, and this, added to its prohibited nature, should make for another quality night at the Cube.
New tunes, fresh from Colombia, will be playing at the bar before the film, so get down at 8pm!
Directions to the Cube: http://microplex.cubecinema.com/cubewebsite/directions.html
Violeta Info:
Review in Spanish (there are none in English!): http://www.cinefagos.net/index.php?Itemid=3&id=328&option=com_content&task=view
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGsDbV94UPs
Wiki: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violeta_de_mil_colores
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0485164/
IMDB trivia: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0485164/trivia
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