A ‘Heart Unions’ Campaign
Monday, 12th February 2018, 11am – 2pm
101 Horsefair, Bristol, BS1 3JR

Bristol Trades Union Council will be joining the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU)  in this leafleting campaign outside McDonalds premier Bristol store.

The McDonalds campaign is pushing to gain recognition for the Bakers Union now that the Mcstrikers have won a £10 minimum wage for staff.

In 2017 a brave 40 McDonald’s workers at stores in Crayford (south east London) and Cambridge made history. They walked out on the first ever McDonald’s strike in the UK, following the footsteps of tens of thousands of fast food workers across the US, where Fight for $15 has organised a mass movement of strikes, and in New Zealand, where fast food workers now have union recognition and won a victory over zero hours contracts.

It showed that a small group of ‘precarious’ workers stood up to a notorious multi-national giant corporation for the simple demands of a £10 an hour minimum wage, for guaranteed hours contracts, for an end to the most appalling bullying management, and fundamentally, for union rights.

On the day the strike ballot result was announced, McDonald’s announced that it would deliver on its previous promises – offering a guaranteed hours contract to every one of its employees – by the end of 2017.

As a result of taking this bold step to stand up and strike, the workers have experienced a sense of what a union is–workers organising and coming together collectively to achieve what they cannot achieve on their own as individuals.

They have seen that both at a store level in their workplaces, and on a national scale.

It has blown out the water the notion that workers in precarious conditions cannot organise and strike.

And it has created a positive pressure across the rest of the established trade union movement, at a time when the issue of pay is a central focus in the political arena.