Building on the momentum of the successful in-housing campaign, the Justice for Cleaners group at Goldsmiths has evolved from a single issue campaign initiative, to a fighting force for all precarious workers in the university. Under the name Goldsmiths Workers’ Action, staff and students from J4C will be working to organise and link up precarious workers across the campus. The crisis of the higher education will not be brought to a halt from above but only from below.

With the truncated momentum of the UCU pensions strike close to mind and its epilogue in the form of the pay and inequalities ballot, precarious workers at Goldsmiths are taking the state of the university into their own hands. The cleaners campaign has been a great consciousness raising exercise, not only for the cleaners, but for all precarious, flexible and temporary staff in the university, who are looking at the outcome of that campaign with optimism, confidence and organisational enthusiasm.

In anticipation of the departure of the university Warden, Patrick Loughrey, it is important that workers are forming connections across sectors and getting organised. Just as the cleaners well know, changes within management personnel is most often the prelude to seismic restructuring with the most peripheral workers being hit worst. It important then that relations between this sizeable strata of workers be consolidated both as a measure of defence but also with an eye to build on the cleaners’ victory.

As part of this cross sector organising, Goldsmiths Workers Action have launched their first edition of Goldsmiths Precarious Workers’ Bulletin. Following the tradition of workplace bulletins which have sought to educate, inform and politicize workers, the Precarious Workers’ Bulletin will aim to cultivate awareness and solidarity among precarious workers and establish points of overlap in their deeply fragmented political interests.

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