Capital and Class/CSE Midlands is hosting the following event:
Picturehouse Strike Speaker Tour
Thursday 23 November, 6-7.30pm
University of Birmingham, Arts Lecture Room 3
The ongoing Picturehouse dispute has seen over 300 cinema workers take strike action for over 12 months. In an event hosted by Capital and Class/CSE Midlands, Kelly Rogers, one of the trade unionists involved in organising the strike, will talk about the campaign and what we can do to support it.
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Workers in the Picturehouse cinema chain have been demanding a real Living Wage since 2014. A series of strikes then resulted in a 26 percent pay rise and a commitment from Picturehouse to work towards implementing the Living Wage over the subsequent two years. The company reneged on this deal, and since September 2016 workers have been back out on strike. Running for over a year now, the renewed dispute has grown considerably: from one cinema on strike, to six; approximately 50 union members in the chain, to over 300. In addition to a real Living Wage, workers are demanding decent sick pay, company maternity and paternity pay, recognition for their chosen union, BECTU, and pay rises for their supervisors, managers, chefs and projectionists.
Predominantly young workers, many of them migrants, the Picturehouse dispute bucks the trend of a trade union movement in decline, and shows us that precarious, low-paid and migrant workers are leading the fight for better pay and conditions today.
Kelly Rogers is an organiser for the Picturehouse strike and one of four sacked union representatives from the Ritzy Picturehouse in south London.
More details: https://www.crowdpac.co.uk/campaigns/250/picturehousestrike
https://campaign.goingtowork.org.uk/…/picturehouse-cinemas-…
