Emergency Rally called for 4.30pm

Speakers to be confirmed.

All media welcome

SOAS steps

4.30pm.

Many staff will also be there.

Sign the online petition at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/28557.html

Stop Racist Deportations petition to print off for workplaces etc

Stop Racist Deportations at SOAS

Another Education is Possible

Recently SOAS cleaners, through fighting back and uniting with students and other workers from other backgrounds, were able to win improvements in conditions and the London Living Wage.

At 6.30am on Friday the 12th June, without any advance warning SOAS cleaning staff were called to an emergency ‘Staff Meeting’, were confined in a room and then confronted by a team of 40 immigration officers who had been hiding under staged seating.

9 cleaners were arrested and sent to detention centres and are under threat of immediate deportation.

The outsourced cleaning company ISS and the schools management were aware of this intended raid and helped facilitate the removal of the cleaners.

We denounce the actions of the school and demand that academic institutions should not be complicit in assisting the Government in implementing their racist immigration programme. We find this particularly disgraceful given SOAS’s attempt to shake the reputation leftover from its colonial past. SOAS cannot lecture other countries about oppression when it complies in programmes such as this.

We cannot allow employers and the Government to use the threat of deportation to intimidate workers and prevent them from fighting to improve pay and conditions.

We urge you to show solidarity with the cleaners, UNISON and SOAS SU. We need to:

• Protest against the deportation of migrant workers and their families.
• Bring all workers in house, to receive equal treatment to SOAS staff, and force the university to take full responsibility for them.
• Formally disassociate from agencies such as ISS, and condemn such practice as witnessed at SOAS.
• Support calls for an amnesty for all migrant workers.

Name

Union

Email

Phone number

Great comments from online petition

You can sign the petition HERE and leave more comments.

Capital is allowed to flow freely in and out of the country, so should labour, are we not meant to be living in a 'free market' economy? This is indicative of the current trend towards racism displayed by the establishment under the banner of 'immigration controls'. Let them stay and work.


Great timing, on the first day of Refugee Week.
SOAS and ISS, you disgust me. Your have failed in your duty as an employer to carry out adequate checks on your staff proir to taking them on and have used this as a convenient excuse to take revenge on your employees for winning the London Living Wage campaign and for their support for their wrongfully dismissed UNISON branch chairman.
As a SOAS student, I no longer welcome ISS's presence on my campus.


I am ashamed of soas as an institution. I am particularly disgusted by the way in management informed us that there was nothing to worry about as they would replace those who had been deported. What an insult! To be placed on the same moral level as soas management. we should remember that the way the state treats migrant workers tells us something about the way they would like to treat the rest of us. And the same goes for SOAS management. Contemptible.

Cowardly Iss have colluded with cowardly SOAS Management to criminalise those who deserve the respect that comes to great adventurers and fighters for justice. Just as Nelson Mandela was once incarcerated and later released to become first statesman, so the SOAS cleaners will be released and recognised as victims of anti-Trade Unionists and despots. Viva the SOAS cleaners!!!