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Supporting Sheffield recycling workers
Alistair Tice
We marched through the gates into the yard chanting "MHH-hear us say, Picket lines are here to stay!" MHH Contracting Ltd are a haulage company that have been hired by Veolia/Sova to break the Sova recycling workers' strike in Sheffield.
They have been contracted to empty skips at the Dump-It sites because the Veolia drivers, members of the GMB union, who normally do this work have refused to cross picket lines.
Because the striking GMB members have been advised that it is illegal to secondary picket under the anti-trade union laws, Socialist Party members who have been supporting the Sova workers' fight against cuts in jobs, hours and pay, organised a protest picket against this strike-breaking company.
Protesters then started to demonstrate at the gates with banners opposing the recycling cuts and in support of the Sova strikers. We stopped three lorries from coming in before the police were called.
We were back over the weekend stopping MHH wagons. We talked to the drivers, who are sympathetic but not in a union and frightened for their jobs.
If Veolia/Sova can't empty the skips, then the recycling centres that are being kept open by managers and scabs will be shut down within a few days. In any case the indefinite strike, now in its second week, is having a big effect, shutting down three of the five Dump-It sites.
The strikers' case will be reinforced when the GMB members, Socialist Party and strike supporters return to the Town Hall to put more pressure on the Labour council who made the cuts in the first place.
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