Meta accused of breaching workers rights over union rep cleaner’s dismissal
Meta has been accused by Amnesty International of breaching workers’ rights over claims a Bolivian cleaner working at its London offices was fired for being a union rep.
The Facebook owner is set to face a protest outside its Brock Street offices on Friday ahead of the start of an unfair dismissal tribunal on Wednesday next week.
The backlash comes after Guillermo Camacho, a cleaner employed by outsourcing company Churchill Group, was dismissed from his job last October, after he organised industrial action over working conditions.
Camacho, a representative for the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU), had previously organised protests outside Meta’s offices over the decision to cut the number of cleaners from 24 to 20, and almost triple the size of the area that had to be cleaned.
A spokesperson for JLL, the firm that contracted the Churchill Group to clean Meta’s offices, said the adjustments to the cleaning schedule were made to “maintain hygiene and safety” during Covid-19.
The JLL spokesperson said the extra floors were added to the cleaning area due to “reduced occupancy in the Meta buildings.”
“This did not result in increased workload and we have recruited additional team members,” the JLL spokesperson said.
Amnesty International is now calling on Meta to launch an urgent investigation into Camacho’s dismissal.
Catrinel Motoc, senior campaigner at Amnesty International, said: “Meta is very keen to distance itself from this unpleasant episode, but the buck must stop with them. You can outsource a cleaning account, but not the accountability for how cleaners are treated.”
“Meta should live up to the values it claims it wants to uphold and to the commitments it has made to respect workers’ right to organise.”
“That must start with an urgent investigation into what happened in this case and a radical overhaul of its processes to ensure that its commitment to respect workers’ rights extends to both in-house and outsourced workers.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “The wellbeing of anyone working in our offices is of the utmost importance and we ensured all of our contract workers continued to be paid throughout the pandemic, including when offices were closed.”
“Any Meta supplier has to adhere to our corporate human rights policy, which includes our commitment to internationally recognised charters from the UN and the International Labour Organisation.”
“Suppliers must also ensure that anyone contracted is paid the London Living Wage as a minimum and that our contracts are appropriately resourced.’’
A spokesperson for JLL said: “We have a stringent process of vendor and supplier due diligence that we follow and we are committed to ensuring ethical behavior and regulatory compliance in every market they serve as outlined in our Code of Business Ethics and Vendor Code of Conduct.”
“We respect the rights of unions and employees to demonstrate and we have never instructed Churchill Services to remove any staff member because of union activity.”
Alberto Durango, General Secretary of CAIWU, said union members still working at Meta’s offices say they “continue to live under the cloud of Guillermo’s dismissal,” as he called on the California tech firm to pay out compensation and offer an apology.