Trade Union activity/model 'motion' Archives

October 10, 2023October 10, 2023

Exporting people seeking asylum – Rwanda

Updated 10 October 2023: Human Rights Watch: UK: Abandon Rwanda Asylum Transfer Plan

New Report Documents Rwanda’s Global Targeting of Rwandan Refugees, Critics

Rwandan authorities and their proxies are using violence, judicial mechanisms, and intimidation to try to silence criticism from Rwandans living around the world.
Rwanda’s targeting of Rwandans abroad, including in the UK, underlines Rwanda’s contempt for human rights norms enshrined in the international protection system.
The UK should abandon its asylum transfer deal with Rwanda and take action to enhance the protection of Rwandan residents and refugees in the UK.

(London) – Rwandan authorities and their proxies are using violence, judicial mechanisms, and intimidation to try to silence criticism from Rwandans living around the world, Human Rights Watch said in a report published today. The abuses, which have fostered a climate of fear and self-censorship, are being brought to light as the United Kingdom government is at the Supreme Court appealing the judgment that its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful.

September 1, 2023September 12, 2023

ROAR PUBLIC MEETING: 7th Sept. at 6.30pm

RAPAR: ROAR (Raising Our Asylum Rights)

ROAR is developing out of the actions taken by hotel residents whose bravery has brought some of the human rights violations in asylum hotels to national media attention. Beginning with our first public meeting on 7th September, ROAR wants to make information-sharing and organising spaces where people seeking asylum, supported by allies from trades unions and civil society, safely expose human rights violations, participate in constructing alternative solutions, and openly campaign for those solutions (event flyer).

ROAR PUBLIC MEETING: 7th Sept. at 6.30pm

ACCESS THE EVENT FLYER FOR DISTRIBUTION ROAR: RAISING OUR ASYLUM RIGHTS
RESISTING RACISM IN HOTELS

PUBLIC MEETING, 6.30PM, 7th SEPTEMBER 2023: FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, 6 MOUNT STREET, MANCHESTER M2 5NS

July 21, 2023September 5, 2023

Destroying hopes, dreams and lives: How the UK visa costs and process impact migrants’ lives

21 July 2023: Migrants Organise/Medact: Unions unite with migrant organisations to call out government plan to fund pay rise with higher migrant fees.

Major trade unions – including the BMA, NEU, NASUWT, GMB and PCS – have come together with over 50 migrant organisations, to call out the government’s plan to fund a public sector pay rise through higher NHS and visa fees for migrants.

Joint Statement

As trade unions and migrant organisations, we stand against this Government’s attempts to pit worker against worker. We know that an injury to one is an injury to all.

All workers deserve decent pay, safe working conditions and protections if our bosses seek to take advantage of us. Public sector workers deserve pay rises, but we strongly oppose any decision to fund this by further taxing migrants, by hiking visa costs and NHS fees. This is a blatant attempt to sow division within the labour movement and our communities.

Increasing the Immigration Health Surcharge by 66% and increasing visa costs will push ever more people into destitution and poverty. The UK already effectively taxes migrants twice for healthcare, and has some of the most extortionate visa fees in Europe – a migrant family of four often has to pay around £50,000 over 10 years for the right to stay. This massive increase is simply unaffordable – it will price workers out of being able to afford a visa and force thousands further into poverty during the cost of living crisis, or out of the country.

June 30, 2023September 16, 2023

Stop the deportations

Updated 30 June 2023: Twitter: NUJ @NUJofficial Thank you @grahamemorris for writing to the Immigration Minister to seek an urgent intervention in journalist Ghazi Gareeb Zorab’s case. There are credible threats to Ghazi’s safety if he is returned to Iraq.

June 25, 2023June 25, 2023

Paul O’Connor Senior National Officer writes about the PCS Campaign

PCS are a supporter of the Status Now Network. Here Paul O’Connor Senior National Officer writes about the PCS Campaign

Pushbacks

In autumn 2021, PCS was approached by members and representatives in our Home Office South-East England branch who had been asked by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel to carry out a dangerous pushbacks manoeuvre on small boats crossing the English Channel. Our members were clear that they were completely opposed to the policy. They considered it unlawful, morally reprehensible and utterly inhumane.

On the back of that approach, alongside Care4Calais and Channel Rescue, PCS launched a legal challenge against the policy via judicial review. The impact of this coalition should not be underestimated – here we had an organisation representing workers tasked with carrying out a policy; standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with organisations representing those affected by the policy – a clear indication of the level of inhumanity that the government is attempting to inflict on refugees.

June 12, 2023June 12, 2023

Campaigner slams institutional racism of Britain’s asylum system

12 June 2023: Morning Star: BFAWU Conference 2023: Campaigner slams institutional racism of Britain’s asylum system

BRITAIN’S deliberately hostile asylum system is institutionally racist and designed to keep people down, a former claimant forced to navigate it warned today.

Loraine Masiya Mponela, who spent years in the system before finally winning settled status last year, said she could testify to the pain and suffering it causes.

She is part of the Status Now 4 All campaign, which wants ministers to grant every “undocumented, destitute migrant indefinite leave to remain so every human can access the same resources as everyone else.”

The activist, who addressed the Bakers’ Union’s annual conference in Stone, Staffordshire, described the call, backed by more than 150 organisations, as logical, rational and just, adding: “No human should be illegal and subjected to a loss of dignity.

“We must work together to create a Britain that is compassionate and just, a Britain that recognises the inherent wealth and value of all individuals.

“As [US founding father] Benjamin Franklin once said, justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”

Ms Mponela’s new book of poetry, I Was Not Born a Sad Poet, is available now.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/campaigner-slams-institutional-racism-britains-asylum-system

May 17, 2023May 17, 2023

UNISON Migrant Worker Network

UNISON North West: @NorthWestUNISON Twitter:

You can join the UNISON Migrant Worker Network to get targeted advice, support and information and raise the issues that are important to you

Go to https://bit.ly/454lG3E to sign-up

March 13, 2023April 1, 2023

StatusNow4All Newsletter March 2023

Welcome to this edition of SNN newsletter where we are covering a number of items that will be of interest to everyone involved in migrant and refugee solidarity work.

The first article comments Sunak’s ‘stop small boats’ plan with the ‘illegal migration bill’.

The second highlights how the government’s aim is not to ‘stop the small boats’, but to stop people asking for refugee status in the UK and invite the workers’ and antiracist movements to further mobilize together against the government’s cruel antirefugee policy.

Our third article reports the result of a recent research that shows how the 10-year route is a ‘punishing process’ that reduces immigrants in misery.

Children and the hostile environment is the topic of our fourth article that invite to a webinar organized by our signatory Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment.

Finally, we publish a call from our signatory Migrant Voice to contribute to their forthcoming report on the conditions of asylum seekers in London hotels.

March 6, 2023September 16, 2023

Trade unions unite in solidarity with refugees

The Fire Brigades Union is proud to have coordinated the following statement, which was passed as a resolution at our Executive Council last week:

In recent weeks, we have seen an alarming rise in violence and intimidation organised by the far right against refugees and refugee accommodation.

The government is complicit in these attacks. The Rwanda policy does not make sense as a means of stopping small boat crossings – and it is failing on its own terms – but it fits with a long-running campaign of rhetoric and demonisation.

Anti-migrant politics are an attempt to divide working class people against each other. In the past decade, the UK has suffered a crisis of living standards – with wages falling and public services left to rot. The people to blame for this are politicians, billionaires and big corporations, not migrant workers or refugees forced to live in temporary accommodation. The anti-refugee campaign offers no solutions to the real problems faced by the deprived communities they are often targeting. The answer is solidarity, not scapegoating.

As trade unionists, we know whose side we are on when we see far right mobs attacking refugees and politicians playing the mood music. We send our solidarity to Care4Calais and all groups fighting for refugee rights, and we support the call for safe and legal routes into the UK. We call on workers and trade union members to show their solidarity and to mobilise against the far right.

Signed

February 21, 2023March 12, 2023

StatusNow4All Newsletter February 2023

Welcome to this edition of SNN newsletter where we are covering a number of items that will be of interest to everyone involved in migrant and refugee solidarity work.

The first article analyses the government ‘s responsibilities for the racist riot in Knowsley.

The second highlights how four reviews of the hostile environment recently published by the Home Office show that this policy is racist.

The fight for antiracist workplaces and our call for status now for all is the focus of our third article,

while the fourth article shows the strong support of the BFAWU (Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union) to our campaign and reports an important motion approved by its executive committee.

February 20, 2023March 12, 2023

The Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union’s support to the call for status now for all

20 February 2023: The president of BFAWU (Bakers, Food & Allied Workers Union), Ian Hodson, was one of the participants in the Status Now Network strategy weekend (held on 27th – 29th January).

He found it to be ‘a very inspirational event meeting real leaders and fighters for justice, people who are suffering real hardship but show incredible strength and resilience’.

He wrote this contribution announcing the motion approved by the BFAWU executive committee and stressing their strong commitment to the status now for all campaign:

Having recently attended the Status Now strategy weekend, I was pleased to report back to my national executive about the positive time I spent taking part in developing how we build the campaign and solidarity. I am pleased that our executive has adopted the following motion which will now go to our conference in June this year. It reads as follows:

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023

Migration Health and Care

PICUM: FINLAND: NEW LAW EXPANDS HEALTH CARE FOR UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS

A new law has recently come into force in Finland that expands health care for undocumented migrants living in the country. Under this law, undocumented people can now access necessary care – that is, care that health care professionals deem necessary. This covers, for instance, conditions like diabetes or asthma that, if left untreated, would constitute a risk to the person’s health and increase the likelihood of urgent care being needed in the future.

January 12, 2023February 21, 2023

StatusNow4All Newsletter January 2023

Welcome to this edition of SNN newsletter where we are covering a number of items that will be of interest to everyone involved in migrant and refugee solidarity work.

The first article analyses the renewed government attacks on the rights of migrants and invites all movements for migrant justice to come together and intensify our campaigns to defeat them.
The second article reports the launch of the antiracist network promoted by the Trade Union Congress.
A call for the rights of domestic workers by our signatory Waling Waling is the topic of our third article, while a contribution by our signatory Migrant Voice denounces the horrible conditions experienced by asylum seekers in London hotels.
Finally we welcome our new signatory Migrant Democracy Project.

January 11, 2023January 11, 2023

Britain’s unions launch of anti racist network

The inaugural meeting of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) anti racist network took place in London last November.

It was attended by about 50 people, The overwhelming majority of them were migrant and migrant advocate organisations’ members.

The discussion stressed the importance that all workers, whatever their immigration status is, get organised to stop exploitation, and showed a general wish to see a permanent network created and coordinated by the TUC.

A number of thought provoking speakers were heard (including Emmanuelle Andrews, Liberty; Fizza Qureshi, Migrants Rights Network; Gargi Bhattacharyya, TUC Race Relations Committee; Liam Shrivastava, Institute of Race Relations; Sereena Abbassi, gal-dem; Sophie Chauhan, Dalston Superstore). The Government’s anti migrant and racist legislation was condemned and it was evident that the TUC and individual Unions accepted that they must do much more, both in challenging racism and organising precarious workers.

July 7, 2022September 15, 2022

StatusNow4All newsletter July 2022

Welcome to this edition of SNN Newsletter!
We are covering a number of items in this issue that will be of interest to everyone involved in migrant and refugee solidarity work.

First up is the report on our campaign for better asylum seeker accommodation. Our SNN colleagues in the North West are particularly active in this area and after a first online event during Refugee Week are now planning new initiatives to fight for better provision of safe and decent homes for people in the asylum system.

The second article is dedicated to the campaign “Our place is here” developed by Kanlungan together with other organizations in defense of the rights of domestic workers.

The third item reports on the SNN event organised during Refugee Week which assembled a roundtable of activists to discuss where we have got to with the campaign against the hostile environment and the steps that need to be taken for this to go forward. The key idea is the project underway to organise a People’s Tribunal on Migration Justice over the course of the next 12 months which will draw on the evidence of violation of the rights of migrant people to indict Government policies and help forge the sort of alliances we will need to bring about change.

The appalling news about the deaths of at least 37 people at the border between the Spanish enclave of Melilla and Morocco is the subject of our fourth feature. In response to this massacre at the hands of the Spanish civil guard and the Moroccan police authorities the Transnational Migrant Platform has launched an appeal for solidarity and action to force an inquiry into how the tragedy happened.

Finally, our fifth article focuses on the important role assumed by the Union, particularly by the Public Services and Commercial Union (PCS), in the fight against the Rwanda offshore plan and stresses the need to fight all together for the rights of migrant and native workers in the UK.

In addition to these items we also have information on the call for a public demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 19 July to coincide with the opening of the judicial review hearing on the legality of the Home Office’s Rwanda refugee removal plan. Do join us at this protest if you can.