Freedom News

Cleaners confront Great Ormond Street Hospital over years of “institutional racism”

Yesterday brought a momentous ten-day tribunal hearing where Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) faces a first of a kind group claim for indirect race discrimination brought by 80 Black, brown and migrant cleaners. For decades, the cleaners were outsourced on lesser terms and conditions than other directly employed GOSH workers, which led to a dispute

Save ASIRT: Asylum seeker legal support charity threatened with closure

A charity who provides free legal advice to asylum seekers in Birmingham and the West Midlands is closing down, despite being financially healthy. Trustees of the charity have rejected attempts by the workers’ union, United Voices of the World (UVW)  to negotiate with them, after the workers’ asked for union recognition and an end to

Victory for domestic and sexual abuse charity counsellors over ‘gig economy’

UVW members working as counsellors for Solace Women’s Aid won a legal battle over their employment status on Monday when a judge ruled that the charity had misclassified them as self-employed independent contractors when in reality they were workers, under s.230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. This false status meant they had no access

Architectural workers threatened with redundancies as they initiate historic strike ballot

Following months of being ignored by management after raising issues regarding their pay and conditions, workers at Atomik, a London-based architectural company, are initiating a strike ballot. In June 2022, some workers individually raised the matter of pay in their annual reviews. When they were ignored, they wrote a collective letter outlining their demands. UVW-SAW