Organise! IWA workers in Belfast have won a key victory against their bosses at Obsidian-Echo Body Piercing. In the first action of its kind in the city, the workers forced their return to work in safer roles and no loss of pay alongside an admission from the owner, Pamela, that immediate disciplinary procedures following the walkout from an unsafe working environment wasn’t possible. Of course, the boss tried to claim the return of lost pay was a ‘goodwill’ gesture in spite of the fact that the threat of ‘investigations’ for disciplinary action remains, apprenticeships have been stalled, no lone worker policy is in place or being discussed, and there is still no recognition of the workers’ union that won this climb-down. In addition, the so-called ‘goodwill’ on pay has not extended to paying the workers a decent living wage.

This sulky, bullying and petulant shite from the boss, who has managers and the aid of an expensive human resources consultancy but prefers to personally insert herself into the process and tries to imagine a world where workers have no agency, power or union behind them is a petit-bourgeois wet dream. Organise! IWA-AIT has shown that bosses can’t do whatever the fuck they like to us and just expect that we roll over and take it. Workers will fight back and they will have the support of our union and international to do so at whatever shitty self-serving capitalist outpost they find themselves in, so congratulations, Organise! IWA members at Obsidian-Echo Body Piercing for taking the fight to them and winning an important initial victory. The struggle continues!