Facebook’s owner, Meta, has come under fire after one of its contractors was accused of sacking a union leader in retaliation for leading protests against poor working conditions and excessive workloads for its London-based cleaners.
Guillermo Camacho had worked as a contracted cleaner for the company for almost seven years until he organised the protests outside Facebook’s Brock Street offices in the summer of 2021. He was suspended from his job within months, and fired in October for inadequate performance.
Camacho, who was the cleaners’ representative of the Cleaners & Allied Independent Workers Union, managed to organise only two protests before he was suspended and put on “gardening leave”. Meta’s cleaners are not directly employed by the company: it has a contract with the office management firm JLL, which in turn contracts the services group Churchill, Camacho’s direct employer.
In September 2021 Camacho was told that an investigation was closed and that no further action would be taken, but he remained banned from Meta and JLL’s site and he was dismissed a month later. On 7 September, an employment tribunal will hear his case against Churchill for unfair dismissal.
Alberto Durango, the general secretary of CAIWU, said: “Guillermo’s treatment is all too familiar to us. It’s a blatant and classic tactic to intimidate other workers by making a brutal example of a trade union leader. Our members who still work at Meta’s offices tell us they continue to live under the cloud of Guillermo’s dismissal and the implicit threat that they too could be dismissed for speaking out.”
Amnesty International has backed Camacho’s case, publishing a report calling on Meta to respect the right of its workers to speak out, and to compensate Camacho.
Amnesty said Camacho had organised protests against poor working conditions at Meta’s Brock Street offices. The protests were prompted by a reduction in the number of cleaners, which led to an excessive workload for the remaining workers at Meta’s offices, having a physical and psychological impact on them. In mid-2021, the number of cleaners at Meta’s worksite in London dropped from 24 to 20. Simultaneously, the size of the area to be cleaned increased from five floors to 14.
“This is a David and Goliath story where a huge, global behemoth of a company has simply washed its hands of any responsibility to the people who work on the frontlines of its offices,” said Catrinel Motoc, a senior campaigner at Amnesty.
“We live in a society where all too often workers who dare to speak out against injustices in the workplace find themselves in the firing line. 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.”
A Meta spokesperson said the company was unable to comment on legal proceedings involving an individual it did not employ. “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,” the spokesperson said.
“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 Organization. Suppliers must also ensure that anyone contracted is paid the London living wage as a minimum and that our contracts are appropriately resourced.”
A JLL spokesperson said: “We have a stringent process of vendor and supplier due diligence that we follow and we are committed to ensuring ethical behaviour 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.”
A Churchill spokesperson said: “Due to significantly reduced occupancy in the Meta buildings, adjustments were made to realign cleaning schedules to maintain hygiene and safety. To this end additional floors were added to the specification, however this did not result in increased workload and we have recruited additional team members.”
