School meals workers employed by giant multi national Sodexo won a tremendous victory over sick pay and hourly rates. Working in Richmond schools the workers - mainly women - began the campaign in small numbers. Their campaign eventually won the support of Ed Miliband who used their fight as an example (in his Leadership acceptance speech) of how workers were exploited and needed a union to help them in their hour of need. Ken Livingston also attended their campaign meetings to offer his support for their campaign.
Their success is a text book example of using Organising techniques to build an active union membership with ownership of the campaign. Every school was visited and many workers visited at home by activists to encourage them to join the campaign and counter management disinformation. Enlisting the support of all workers led to them all joining the union across 35 schools.
http://www.unison.org.uk/asppresspack/pressrelease_view.asp?id=2187
