As part of an ongoing campaign, cleaners at a South London John Lewis have entered into a pay dispute with their employer. Although John Lewis purports to run on a socially responsible cooperative business model, the men and women who clean its shops are locked out of this “partnership”. Instead, they are hired through subcontractors who pay, at best, slightly above the national minimum wage.

Coming on the back of other successful living wage for cleaners campaigns, the John Lewis cleaners are demanding an immediate increase.

On Saturday a group of us formed a protest outside Poundland in Priory Meadow shopping centre Hastings against their continued use of the government's workfare scheme. Although few in number we made a very big impact. The first action was to send someone in store to put anti workfare leaflets on the store's shelves. At lot of customers pick these up and read them. We then stood outside the shop front with our banner and handed more leaflets and talked to members of the public. We got a good response and at least 15 people would not shop there after talking to us.

As the Spanish government announced a two year halt on evictions in “the most urgent cases” today, following two suicides by people evicted from their homes, more than a hundred people have demonstrated this evening outside the headquarters of the PP.  Rejecting a “whitewash” and calling for a stop on all evictions they occupied various banks, including the Banco de España. Inside the banks people shouted “how many more will you kill?” and “these are not suicides, they are murders”. The government made the announcement following mass anger when a woman in Barakaldo threw herself from her window just before eviction, and a man in Granada was found hanged in his flat when the police came to evict him.  Evictions are running at 500 a day in Spain. 

Where: Entrance to St. Pancras Station
When: Monday 19th November, 12:00 – 2:00
Contact: pret.staff.union (at) gmail.com or northlondonsf (at) solfed.org.uk

Since being formed earlier this year, the Pret a Manger Staff Union has faced harassment and victimisation.  In an all too familiar scenario, activists from the union have faced a series of trumped-up disciplinary charges.

Join North London SolFed in standing up to union-busting by helping us picket the Pret shop where the union was formed and where two members are in the process of fighting victimisation.

Solidarity is going to be key to fighting fast food exploitation, so spread the word.

A woman committed suicide today in Spain when she was about to be evicted by La Caixa bank. The woman, in Barakaldo, near Bilbao, threw herself from the window just before the eviction. There were protests in many places including Barakaldo and Madrid, and banks across the country are tonight wearing slogans such as "murderers" and "guilty". This is the forth suicide linked to evictions in two weeks. 

There are more than 500 evictions a day in Spain and there is a growing anti eviction movement, which mobilises people to blockade houses and physically prevent the evictions from taking place. 

The following talk was recorded at this year's big anarchist bash and features comments on the controversial government "Workfare" scheme by reps from Boycott Workfare, Solidarity Federation, Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty and others, explaining how people are treated and looking at some of the techniques which are being used to push companies out of the programme.

Critics of the scheme say that using job centres to provide free labour for unskilled or low-skilled jobs actively discourages companies from paying living wages for such jobs - why would they, when they can get the same thing done for free?

As part of the Solidarity Federation's ongoing campaign targeting employers who use workfare, members of North London SF today converged on Kilburn High Road.

Members of North London Solidarity Federation today joined with other activists, trade unionists, and members of the public to demand reinstatement of a victimized Pret a Manger worker.