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28 February, 2011
Low-wage contract workers employed by OCS Group mounted a lawful two-day strike at Tata Steel in Port Talbot, UK, 14-15 February in protest to the cleaning and catering multinational’s miserly pay offer. Some 70 members of UK union Community, most taking their first industrial action, blocked two entrances to Tata’s Corus Strip Products mill in Port Talbot because a living wage has not been paid them since June 2010.
The strikers took brave strike action under the banner “OCS: Have a Heart” in honour of the strike falling on Valentine’s Day. The contract cleaners and Community call on OCS to make a pay offer that exceeds UK’s minimum wage. Many OCS workers at Tata are paid as little as £5.75 an hour.
OCS responded to the strike by bussing in managers and others at 5h00 on 14 February to perform mill-site services. Corus Strip Products in Port Talbot employs 2,900. Reports quickly surfaced that unionised steelworkers at Tata were supporting the strike actions on the inside by not cooperating with scab cleaners. OCS, or Office Cleaning Services, is a Surrey-based property support service company that operates in 40 countries.
Community Region Campaigns Manager Susan Lewis termed the company’s response to the strike a “low blow. While bringing in staff from outside Port Talbot might be legal, it is most certainly not morally right and will do nothing to resolve this dispute.
“OCS workers do some of the toughest and dirtiest jobs on the plant,” added Lewis.
The strike action at Tata could re-occur. It comes at a time when India-based Tata is increasing employment at Port Talbot and another Strip Products division mill in Llanwern. A £185 million investment is now underway on a blast furnace at Port Talbot, and a nearby coal deposit is being studied for extraction. Tata is utilising hundreds of agency workers inside the Port Talbot and Marjam mill, and very recently brought 75 of them into direct employment.
Tata bought Anglo-Dutch Corus Steel in early 2007 for £5.75 million. The Indian company recently sold its Teeside Cast Products mill in North-east England to Sahaviriva Steel Industries of Thailand in a move in which British unions successfully saved 700 jobs.
Community is a union created in a 2004 merger between the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the National Union of Knitwear, Footwear, and Apparel Trades.