cometheunion

On Monday morning a text message was sent out to People Before Profit supporters calling them to meet at the Cafe at 9.30am on Tuesday to take part in ‘a peaceful occupation of an important site which could provide jobs and homes for thousands of people’. In a separate email Ray described the planned action as PBP’s ‘begest (sic.) ever stunt’ and said that it would be on a ‘global media scale’.

Whilst we are no longer on PBP or Ray’s mailing lists, friends of ours are and they forwarded us the details. We decided that as this coincided with our 7 day deadline, it would be a good opportunity to confront Ray and those who have supported him and opposed our campaign. So we wrote the following statement overnight and arranged to meet up nearby.

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We delayed our arrival so we’d get there when the meeting was in full swing, but at 10.15 when we arrived there were less than ten people in the room and half of them appeared to be confronting Ray about other issues. We politely waited our turn.

One woman was confronting Ray about her eviction from the flats above the Cafe and a campaign of abuse that accompanied it. She strongly believed that Ray was her landlord as all the correspondence was through Housemartins, but Ray denies this, and has offered to champion her cause.

Others in the meeting were challenging People Before Profit’s decision to organise a stunt in relation to a topic which other people had been campaigning on for some time without consulting them. The accusation was this is a theme for their other campaigns too and they are focussed on spectacle rather than substance.

Then there was an opportunity to read our statement. We’ve videod the resulting conversation and will try to upload it soon.

The discussion covered many of the themes that have been discussed in various forums over the last few months. Ray repeated his accusations of theft, though bizarrely this time it related to champagne and a laptop that was supposedly stored in the basement. The previous accusation of theft from the till was bypassed after light was shed on the poor accounting practices of the cafe.

John Hamilton, a prominent member of People Before Profit, challenged this new accusation stating that he had spent some time in the basement and had never seen such items stored there. John has previously supported Ray consistently and hasn’t shied away from repeating the rumours about us.

Aside from these accusations Ray took the position that he was in full support of us getting our jobs back if someone could be found who was willing to run the space. His suggestion was that he could contact one of the people who had made an offer for the space and see if they could incorporate us into a plan, including an offer to subsidise our wages.

The arrangement we made was on Thursday night to have an open meeting in the cafe with all interested parties. Ray agreed to invite the bidders, and we now are inviting you. Come along if you have thoughts about what should happen.

After delivering a letter to Ray a week ago, we had received no satisfactory reply from him and he had done nothing to engage seriously with our demands.

We therefore went to the cafe this morning to intervene at a meeting called by Ray prior to a PBP action scheduled to take place later in the day to “occupy for jobs and homes”.

The purpose of this intervention was to confront Ray on his hypocrisy and to challenge the various myths being circulated about us and our dispute by reiterating the true facts of our collective experience and to restate the goals of our campaign.

We and our supporters arrived to find that the planned PBP action had been abandoned but we proceeded to read out our statement.

A discussion took place around the salient points in our statement, during the course of which we directly refuted the various allegations against us, notably claims that we had been stealing and job shirking.

It was also established that the cafe’s closure was due to mismanagement and that the loss of our jobs was therefore an injustice perpetrated upon us, the workers, which still needs to be addressed.

It was recognised that there is now a need to find a collective resolution of the current dispute between management and workers and it was agreed that there will be a meeting at the cafe on Thursday at 7.30pm to this end.  This will take the form of an open and public negotiation with management involving anyone who has had a stake in the cafe, or may want to have a stake in a democratic and accountable community co-operative cafe.
The Union will chair the meeting and set the agenda, which will include our proposal for the premesis, there will also be a discussion open to everyone present about how best to move forward.

If you want to help us win back our jobs via a relaunch of the cafe please come along to Thursday’s meeting.

Here is the statement we read out at our intervention:

We are here today to once again demand the reinstatement of our jobs at Come the Revolution, the cafe on this site.

Ray should be expecting us today, since last Tuesday we delivered a letter to Housemartins, his estate agents, with specific demands to be met within seven days.

We demanded he contacted us collectively to arrange a time to meet face-to-face to discuss the way forward. We also demanded as we have done for a long time that Ray opened the accounts of the café to us so we were on a level playing field, when discussing the reasons why the café does or doesn’t need to close.

Ray hasn’t contacted us as a collective, instead he has contacted one member of our group. His reply made reference to the possibility of the cafe being bought by some one else. We still do not know if the cafe has been bought, as Ray has entirely excluded us from the sale process.

We are also here to dispel some rumours and myths that have been circulated about us.  We have been called work shirkers, liars and thieves by a number of people. We are none of these things, and we can back up every claim we have made about our experience of working at Come the Revolution.

Come the Revolution failed due to mismanagement, not lazy workers. When this mismanagement was responded to through work based organisation, many of us were fired.  

Also, Come the Revolution did take on unpaid staff as part of the so called Workfare scheme. It’s been suggested that we’ve lied about this and this is one of many ‘rumours’ about the café. This is nonsense. His name is Robert, we know him and he has told us he’s happy for us to discuss his case.

More than anything else, we want to put an end to the notion of the cafe not having any money.  This is Tory logic, the logic of austerity: we’re told there’s no money left for this or that service while the people managing it continue to rake it in.  We all know that Ray is independently wealthy, with all sorts of business and property interests. He was able to launch this project in the first place. Some of us were even headhunted by him and Amina to come and work here, so we believe they are responsible for our financial situation.

Ray claims to have turned down prospective buyers for the cafe in order to ensure that it continues to have a 

community resource element to it. If that is the case, we want to know why he can’t add keeping our jobs onto his conditions of sale. We also question his competency to dictate what should occur in the area.

What we don’t understand is that if this were to happen anywhere else in the borough, most of the people in this room would be rushing to support the workers while denouncing the bosses, but when it happens right here under our noses, we’re supposed to believe the bosses’ lies and ignore the workers.  We don’t believe this is right, and that’s why we’re asking for your support today.

Thanks to everyone who came to our meeting on friday, we were bowled over by the solidarity and support we received.  We should have some footage of the night up on youtube soon.

Just as a reminder, we’ve got a campaign organising meeting tomorrow 7pm in the upstairs room at the Amersham arms to work out how we can take the campaign forward.  Send us an e-mail at cometheunion.gmail.com or call/ text us on 07792567805 to confirm if you can come or want anymore details.

Solidarity,

come the revolution union

A recurring question about our campaign is what specifically we wish to achieve.  We want what we’ve always wanted as a union at the cafe, for it to live up to its potential; be a viable workplace free from uncertainty, be a model of good practice professionally and regarding the people who work there and have a meaningful and fruitful engagement with the community.

We believe this is still possible and to this end we have formulated four campaign objectives:

1. Reopening of the cafe with reinstatement of sacked staff, who shall receive written minimum hours contracts
2. A fully formed and coherent business plan and strategy.
3. A meaningful engagement between management and our union in the form of a union-management committee that meets regularly and has a clear mandate.
4. Approval of the health and safety arrangements in the cafe by our union UNITE.

Two weeks ago on the 12th of March, we the workers of Come The Revolution were given our notice, some of us for the third time, with vague conditions that if the cafe didn’t make more money in that time it would have to close and we’d lose our jobs.

The first occasion we were given notice was in November/December, this was rescinded, but the terms worsened with drastic reduction in hours for some workers.

At the start of the New Year we were threatened with notice again, although it was withdrawn soon after without explanation.

The last occasion began with a warning at the beginning of March where we were told the cafe would have to shut sometime in May if takings did not increase to the levels achieved in December. Significantly no plan was presented as to how this target should be met.

Despite a return of takings to the levels they were in December, as specified by Ray, less than a fortnight later all of the workers have been given formal notice of a month.

Our union within the cafe began considering at this point to launch a public campaign to save our jobs, asking people to back us in our three key demands:

• A clear target of what had to be met by when and the economic justification for this.
• A clear business plan of how this should be achieved and a strategy for the future.
• Written contracts guaranteeing minimum hours, as promised by Ray.

It is our understanding that Ray became aware of our plan of going public, which resulted in him contacting the union rep by text informing him to stay away from the cafe, but his notice would be paid.

The remaining union members were in a very uncomfortable situation and the atmosphere in the cafe worsened. One chose to leave, then shortly after another two were told not to come back.

It was then we came under the clear impression that the cafe was to close over Easter for refurbishment and then open with new workers under a different name. A former workfare programme attendee told us he had been approached by Ray asking if he was interested in work.

It was then we chose to release our leaflet.

The cafe has since been shut early, ahead of the stated date of 30th March.
It is our clear impression that the threat of job losses has been used repeatedly to respond to our attempts to organise and make reasonable demands to improve the working conditions within the cafe.

We believe that our demands have been consistent, reasonable and rational. We have repeatedly asked for written contracts with minimum hours and arranged to have these drafted, but Ray refused to sign them. We have also repeatedly stressed the importance of improving the communication and environment within the cafe.

The one weapon Ray has been able to threaten us with throughout is redundancy. In the current economic climate, lots of young workers are desparate to find work, making them vulnerable to exploitative employment practices. We hope to demonstrate with this campaign that as well as representing workers interests in the workplace, unions can engage with the wider community to achieve positive outcomes for workers. We ask you to come to our meeting this Friday and support us in our campaign.